A Day of Small Beginnings Read online

  I felt a pain, like the cut of an ax, in my heart.

  Hillel sank down the wall next to Itzik, who was rigid after what Hillel had just said. “Pesha joined the movement. He became an activist. He got caught organizing striking workers. They put him in prison, but he said they couldn’t do anything to him that would change his mind about fighting for a better life here and now. He and his wife take in boarders like me, and he teaches us social history. He’s a photographer by trade.” Hillel smiled. “He likes to collect pictures too, especially of Indians in America.”

  Itzik looked at him like a bird in a nest, opening its mouth to be fed. “Why?”

  “Pesha says the Jews are like the Indians. We hold to this idea of the greatness of our ‘tribe.’ They dress themselves in feathers and paint. We dress in caftans and fur. But it’s all an illusion, he says, just like the studio photographs with the painted backgrounds. We’ve both been conquered. The Indians they sent to live on reservations, the Jews to the Pale of Settlement in Russia, to live like rats and starve. Pesha says the only picture that tells the true story is the one a friend of his in America sent him. It’s hanging in a frame in his house—a freezing Indian boy huddled between two mongrel dogs, trying to keep warm in the bitter winter on the plain. Pesha says that’s what comes from allowing ourselves to be led by superstitious, fanatical chiefs and rabbis. That’s what happens to people who insist on being tribal in the twentieth century.”

  “What choice is there? We’re different from other people.”

  “No we’re not, Itzik. If we become kindred to our fellow Poles, stop calling ourselves the chosen people, and insulting them with our kosher eating, they’ll stop hating us for being different. We’ll be able to live like men in this country. That’s how Piotr and I are brothers.”

  Itzik nodded slowly. Then he began to smile. The color returned a little to his cheeks. “If socialism will get rid of the thieving rabbis, then I’m for it.”

  “Well,” said Hillel, giving Itzik a playful tap on the head, “then you’d better learn how to drink!”

  Thwap! I broke one of the strings on Hillel’s guitar and kept him turning around in confusion, looking for the cause. What was he teaching my Itzik? To be kindred to our fellow Poles? Was he stupid or just willfully blind? When the Poles let us own land and live where and how we want, maybe we’ll be kindred as two dignified peoples can be. Blame the rabbis and our traditions for the rules the Poles made for us? What kind of crazy thinking was this? The best thing a Jew can aspire to, after five thousand years of survival, is to learn to drink like a Pole? For shame!

  A fog had rolled in, carrying with it the smell of horse manure and sewage, tar and smoke. I hovered over Hillel and Itzik as the two made their way to Bonipart Street through a maze of tiny workshops that gave off their own smells of leather, yeast, sour cabbage, and decayed herring.

  We arrived at Pesha Goldman’s damp basement apartment. “Sholem-aleichem,” Pesha’s wife, Devora, welcomed us. “Aleichem-sholem,” Hillel answered. She put her hand on Itzik’s shoulder and ushered my exhausted boy in, even though Hillel had barely explained his presence. “You look very tired,” Devora said to Itzik. “Lie down on that pallet. I’ll bring you a cup of tea.” Her hair was not covered by a marriage cap, as would have been proper. But even so, I liked her and the care she took to make Itzik, a stranger, comfortable.

  Itzik mumbled his thanks and went immediately to the place Devora had indicated for him to lie down. He pulled out the red ribbon his sister Hindeleh had given him and began to play with it, comforting himself by wrapping and rewrapping it first around his fingers, then his wrists and forearms.

  Almighty God, I called out. I think maybe You should take a look at what Itzik the Socialist, the one all of Zokof used to call Itzik the Faithless One, has done with his little sister Hindeleh’s ribbon. You see? He can’t let go of You. Look how he wraps it, around his hand like a pious Jew laying tefillin.

  The door opened, and Pesha came in, stout but sturdy, squinting slightly through his glasses. “Ah, Hillel. Are Schimmel and Gordon with you?” he asked, removing his coat and galoshes.

  “No,” his wife answered. “They went to the printer for the leaflets.”

  “Well, good. Good. They’ll be ready for distribution tomorrow then.” Pesha rubbed his hands together and nodded agreeably at his wife. Then, noticing Itzik on the floor, he said, “A new student?”

  Hillel smiled. “Yes, he’s just got off the train from Radom this afternoon, and he’s already become a socialist.”

  Itzik sat up.

  “Very impressive,” Pesha said warmly. Then, studying Itzik more closely, he said to him, “You have a good face. I wonder if you’d mind posing for me tomorrow.”

  Itzik stared up at Pesha, so drunk with fatigue he could not speak. Who could blame him, poor soul? In one day, he’d been accused of killing a man, been forced to leave his home and family in terror, and traveled to a strange city, where he’d been tossed from here to there like a dust rag.

  Pesha nodded understandingly. “We can talk about this tomorrow. Rest, child.”

  That night, long after Itzik had fallen into his deep sleep and Pesha’s students had reassembled under their teacher’s roof, I listened as they ate pumpkin seeds from a paper bag and recounted stories of Jews whose beards had been ripped out from the skin, of women raped and babies skewered on bayonets. What bothered me most was my certainty that they did not share these stories with their Polish “brothers.”

  I watched over Itzik, so small for his age, so alone. I wondered, could it be that our feeling for faith comes more from loyalty to those who make us feel we belong than from an idea about, or even a need for, God? I knew what my beloved father would say. He would point to Itzik’s bound forearm, crisscrossed with Hindeleh’s ribbon, ready for prayer.

  8

  A FEW DAYS AFTER HE’D SETTLED IN AT PESHA GOLDMAN’S, Itzik went back to Plac Grzybowski to find work. Hillel went too. They were listening to a half smiling organ grinder when all of a sudden Mendel the Blacksmith lunged out of nowhere, grabbed Itzik by the scruff of the neck, and dragged him, with Hillel at his heels, into the darkness of a courtyard entryway.

  “What are you crazy, walking around here in broad daylight?” Mendel said, pushing Itzik against the wall. “You want we should all be arrested?”

  Itzik, his breath knocked out of him, turned the color of paste. “What’s the matter?” he whispered.

  “What’s the matter? Gottenu! You killed a man! The word is everywhere. You think you can just disappear in Warsaw?” His eyes narrowed. “Killed a man, you hear me? And not just any farchadat peasant, no. You had to pick one whose father saw the Virgin Mary over the Tatra Mountains. Now they got a bishop after you.” He cuffed Itzik’s left ear with one hand and grabbed him at the chest with the other. But it was fear, not anger, I saw in his eyes.

  “You came to my house and let me think you were just another runaway kid I should return to his father. Made such a tumult, the whole building was talking about you and your friend there. If it gets out you’re the one they’re looking for, they’ll come and take me in for questioning. And when they find you, they’re gonna hang you from the nearest tree, believe me.”

  He shook a jagged finger in Itzik’s face, but to me it looked like the hand of the Almighty Himself, scolding me for being so careless with Itzik’s safety. What was I thinking, letting him parade around in the open, maybe attracting dangerous attention? I was making speeches to God against the socialists, but they were the only ones protecting him. Them and this louse Mendel.

  May you live to be a hundred twenty—without teeth, I cursed myself. Ten thousand times I must have said this in my life, but now that I was without a body to call my own, the effect wasn’t so satisfying. Ach! Say it plain, you foolish old yideneh. If you didn’t have children, it’s because God knew better than to give them to you. You didn’t protect this precious boy, not even from Mendel’s hand. You’ve broken y
our promise to his mother that you would protect him.

  Itzik’s head hung to one side. He rubbed his bruised ear. “It was an accident with the peasant, Mendel. I swear on my mother’s name!”

  I felt a blow from inside, and then my sight was gone. I don’t know for how long I was like this, but after some time, the pain disappeared and my sight returned, such as it was. Only, I couldn’t tell if what I saw was real. I saw Sarah, Itzik’s mother, wearing all her clothes on top of each other, carrying her red-haired little girl, Hindeleh, down an empty road, who knows where. I called to her, I won’t leave him! She didn’t hear. God forgive me, but I was grateful when she went away and I didn’t have to look at the pity of it. This much I knew: Sarah and her other children were outside my power to save, and they were gone from Zokof. But I promised Sarah again—what I could do for Itzik, I would.

  Warsaw returned to my sight, and I humbled myself in gratitude to the Compassionate One.

  “An accident? You killed a man!” Mendel scoffed at Itzik. “Ptuh! You think you got a city of refuge here? The goyim don’t care if you did it or if one of theirs did. Don’t you know yet they make it all up anyway? Schlemiel!” He smacked Itzik on the side of his head. “They make us up!”

  I slammed a door inside the courtyard to get Mendel to his point.

  He checked the courtyard then grabbed the outer door handle, ready to escape if he had to. “There are reports about a pogrom in Zokof. It’s all over the Jewish press. Everyone’s talking, so now the authorities have to make a show of an investigation. One thing’s for sure, you’re not going back to Zokof. Understand?”

  Itzik’s eyes snapped open. “What happened to my family?”

  “Do I know? The story is the Russian magistrate over there wouldn’t send a detachment of soldiers to stop it. Wouldn’t take a bribe. Probably wasn’t big enough. Now some landowner named Milaszewski is saying his peasants had to defend themselves from the Jewish devils who started up with them. People are dead, you little shit! All because you had to start up with the only famous peasant in town. What a business!” Mendel waved his free hand above his head.

  “Why wouldn’t the Russian magistrate send the detachment?” Itzik said helplessly. “Avrum Kollek said they’d come. He had enough for a bribe.”

  Hillel had been leaning against the wall, graceful but on guard. “It’s like I’ve been telling you, Itzik,” he said, pouncing on the chance to make a socialist’s point. “The landowners and the Russians don’t mind letting things get stirred up now and then. It gives the peasants a little distraction, so they don’t get ideas. A few Jews get hurt, maybe even killed, so what? The country’s full of them. It keeps the bigger peace.” He smiled ironically, for Mendel’s benefit, I thought.

  Mendel’s blackened hands fell to his sides. Encouraged, Hillel went on. “And if things get out of hand, they can always count on the Church, the great Opiate of the People, to call us Christ killers from the pulpits and justify the bloodletting that way. You understand now, Itzik?”

  I looked into Itzik’s bewildered eyes, so like his mother’s. The story was as old as Moses. Every Pesach we tell the tale of our redemption from bondage in Egypt. But if we were still being used for other people’s purposes, we were still slaves. Still slaves.

  “What should I do?” Itzik whispered.

  Hillel sighed, the oratory suddenly gone out of him. “You have to leave the country, Itzik.”

  No! I cried. Blessed God, please don’t make us leave Poland! He needs Polish soil to grow. I need it.

  But Mendel agreed with Hillel. “Leave the country and things will die down. What else can they do? Kill more Jews?”

  Itzik shrank to the stone floor in the shadows of the entryway, scared as a cornered mouse. “Things didn’t die down when they found out I left Zokof. They made a pogrom,” he said, chin on his knee.

  “They can’t make a pogrom against all the Jews in Poland,” Hillel argued. “Itzik, I have friends. I’ll book you passage to America.”

  “Just get him out of here fast,” Mendel said. “And when you get to America, you’d be smart to change your name, like my worthless son Shima the Gonif—the Thief. Then no one will ever find you.” He sneered. “That’s what America’s for, a place to send our dreck.”

  If he changes his name, not even he will find himself, Mendel! I said. But of course, he didn’t hear me. No one heard me. The Golden Land, they call America. What could such a name mean but that gold is all they value there? God help us, Itzik and I were going to a fool’s paradise. Then I cursed myself for dreading it, for resisting God’s will. If that was the place where Itzik would be safe, that was where I should gladly go.

  “Zie gezunt—good health,” Mendel said, and walked out the entry door, finished with Itzik forever. Ach! A pox on him.

  An awkward moment passed before Hillel took Itzik by the arm and led him back into the crowded street to Pesha Goldman’s empty apartment. He pointed to a chair by the kitchen table. “Sit down. I’ll pour you a cup of hot water,” he said.

  Eventually, Itzik began to speak. “What happened, I’m not even sure,” he mumbled, not taking his eyes off the cup.

  Hillel sat down opposite and laid his open hands on the table. “Try,” he said very gently, because Itzik looked sure to fall apart.

  A mishmash of words came. “The boys had Yudel the Teacher’s lantern. It was late. I was on the other side of the road, but I saw Jan, the one with the laugh, the famous one. He had the whip out again. Always he has it out for the littlest ones. But the horse made him fall, not me.” Itzik looked up at Hillel, tears all over his face. “Now he’s dead.”

  Hillel waited patiently for him to go on.

  “The Poles came after me. I hid in the cemetery until they left. Then I went to Avrum Kollek. He gave me money, and he went for the Russian magistrate.” Itzik choked back more tears and collapsed in his chair, a heap of shaking rags.

  I sang to him, curled my soul around him, and tried to soothe him as I’d soothed his mother. Nothing. Hillel came around the table and put a hand on his shoulder. “You did what you could.” He waited for Itzik to calm. I pulled back. Useless again. Even my gravestone he’d left out. For him, this was nothing. How was I to help this boy if he didn’t even know I was part of his story?

  Hillel’s dreamy eyes had a look of melancholy. Their crinkled corners had lost their laughter. “We’ll have to hide you while I organize some papers for you and book the boat passage to America,” he said. Itzik hung his head, but Hillel, suddenly excited by his plan, rushed on. “We’ll put you in Pesha’s darkroom! It’ll be safe. It’s perfect!” He laughed and coaxed a smile from the boy.

  Later, Pesha Goldman, may his name be inscribed forever, agreed to hide Itzik, even though it was a danger.

  Itzik didn’t take much more on his journey to America than the clothes on his body and the contents of his small sack. The sun shone so bright on the day he left, it reached even the Goldmans’ damp basement apartment. Devora filled the sack with freshly baked poppy-seed rolls. “Safe journey, Itzik,” she said. Pesha smiled and handed him the two photographs they’d taken the day after Itzik had arrived in Warsaw. They were mounted on cards, with the studio name and address on the bottom right corner.

  Itzik stared at one, his portrait. He looked so fine, dressed in the stately studio clothes Pesha had fastened in the back with clips. The second photograph was of him seated, with Hillel standing next to him, his hand on Itzik’s shoulder. In the white border below, Pesha had written, Chaverim—May 5, 1906.

  Hillel glanced at Pesha’s writing. “Friends,” he said sadly.

  “Take them both,” Pesha told Itzik. “With what’s going on, we can’t keep them.”

  Hillel looked longingly at the photograph of the two of them.

  “Thank you,” Itzik murmured.

  Pesha winked at Itzik. “Don’t worry. They’ll never recognize the criminal Itzik Leiber under that cap Hillel got you.”

  This ma
de everyone smile, even Hillel. It was true. The cap was so big, all you could see was Itzik’s chin. He tugged nervously at the knots in his sack, and once again his eyes filled with tears. “I’ll send you my address when I get to America. I’ll send you pictures of Indians.”

  Pesha nodded and patted him softly on the back, after which Hillel took him by the arm and led him out the door. The two of them wound their way through the back streets of Warsaw to the train station.

  As they waited by the train, Itzik said timidly, “I won’t forget you ever, or what you taught me.”

  Hillel chuckled, a little sadly, and rechecked Itzik’s papers. “Take your tunes to America. They’ll keep you from getting lonely.” He bowed his head and let his long hair fall forward so Itzik couldn’t see the tears gathering in his eyes.

  “I can’t sing,” Itzik protested, clearly puzzled why Hillel thought he knew tunes. “You keep them and remember me, all right, Hillel?”

  Hillel opened his arms and pulled Itzik into a tight embrace. The boy shut his eyes, his face contorted in pain, as if he’d never been held like that before and didn’t expect to be held like that again. They clung silently to each other for a long time.

  “Go now,” Hillel said, pulling back, his eyes still lowered as he turned in the direction of the train. It was ready to leave its berth. With a final squeeze at Hillel’s arm, Itzik pulled the photograph of himself and Hillel from his pack and pressed it into Hillel’s hand. Before Hillel could protest, Itzik had joined the flow of families with their piles of bundles and fearful faces, all climbing on board for the journey west.

  I sang my last song of thanks to Hillel then. He smiled slightly. Such a beautiful face, and the soul of a lamed-vovnik. If he was one of them, those thirty-six righteous souls on whom justice in the world depends, I would not be surprised.

  The train pulled away from the station. Itzik pressed his hand against the glass to Hillel, who waved until Itzik was out of sight. Throughout that sorrowful ride across Poland’s flat farmlands, Itzik stared out the window as if committing every field, every willow, and even the Polish roadside shrines to memory.