A Bird's Eye (11 page)

Once she calmed down and began to feel like herself again, my aunt Hannah was glad that she was not going to marry Tobias Whitaker. The memory of trying to take off her clothes didn't fill her with the slightest shame. But the effect was to make her see how small her life was, how unconnected to anything or anyone that mattered.

Without her lessons to occupy her, she found herself thinking constantly of her family in Otwock — her mother and father, her aunts and uncles, her growing cousins. She always believed that someday she would see them again, and now, the letters said, her father was bedridden and hardly spoke. He had to be fed with a spoon. Two of her more adventurous cousins had decided to leave the country in the hope of getting out of Europe, but their whereabouts were unknown.

When I came to visit, she asked for my help. She opened a cotton handkerchief to show the diamond ring inside. Where could she sell it? she wanted to know. I did not let her go to a pawnshop but took her to Scheuer's, the diamond merchants on lower Yonge Street. These days there were too many people selling and not enough buying, but it was a good diamond, and after I told the man with the glass in his eye that we would take it somewhere else, she got a decent price.

I was not with her after that, when she took a cab to the shipping office on Toronto Street and bought a train ticket to Montreal and passage to Antwerp for two days later. Hayim would be in Montreal on business. She went into the Imperial Bank and withdrew the rest of what her brother had deposited into her account. At home, she packed two large trunks, all the clothes she had, so that she might share them with the others.

The crossing would be difficult, as would the train and then the wagon to Otwock. But she would kiss her mother again. She would stroke her father's gaunt cheek. She would be with them, whatever might happen.

Moses Ludwig said that he was trying to cash in on vaudeville before it took its last wheezy breaths, but I didn't believe it. It could not possibly be dying the moment I arrived. I volunteered to change the three or four bulbs burned out in the marquee. The woman who sold tickets held the ladder.

The handbills and some small newspaper advertisements did result in a larger house than usual for the first Friday night show. Single men who didn't want to return to their fleabag rooms, women in pairs or with their whining children, couples out for a lark.

Sigismond Eisler arrived twenty-five minutes before the first act. What did the boy mean, he thought, inviting him to the theatre? In Germany, he had gone to see the Berlin Modern Art Ensemble perform
Woyzeck
. He was not interested in clowns in slouch hats slapping one another. Nevertheless, he was here, perhaps because the boy reminded him of his own child. He purchased a bag of peanuts and tried to tip the usher a nickel as was done back home, but the surprised young man dropped the coin.

Miss Pensler came in next, male heads turning to look, alerted by her unusual height. She took a seat on the aisle, removed her hat, and took from her purse a traveller's edition of the poems of Thomas Hardy.

My mother paused to let another, pushier woman enter first. She sniffed, detecting mildew, then chose a seat near the back, under the overhang of the balcony.

Corinne came in accompanied by her father. He wore a neat suit and tie and a new fedora. Negroes were not required to go up to the balcony, but her father believed it best to do so and they took seats by the rail. Their possessions had already been sent ahead. They had only small bags for the train trip to Chicago, which her father had left in the porters' lockers at Union Station along with his uniform. They would walk to the station as soon as the show was over. Corinne had told me that when the curtain came down she would run from her father, who would never be able to keep up, and that she would hide until he was forced to go to the station without her for fear of missing the train. He'd never missed a train in nineteen years. Once he was gone, he would have to agree to her staying with her aunt and uncle.

My uncle Hayim stayed home. He could not get over his sister's return to the old country. He sat in his shirt sleeves, a bottle of Seagram's at his elbow, and he would spend the night in that chair.

The house lights dimmed. My father groped his way to a seat.

The opening act was a plate spinner, followed by a fake Siamese-twin comedy routine, a Shirley Temple look-alike, and a parrot act. The curtain closed for several minutes while the band played. A spotlight came on and the music turned ominous. The curtain pulled away to show the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler, complete with swept hair and little moustache, uniform and boots, pacing back and forth before a trembling staff under a military tent.

I watched from the wings. The actor's gestures and strut looked just like the newsreels. He ranted about his scheme to conquer the world. The dialogue had been written by someone named Freddy Katz, a Broadway rewrite man who owed Mr. Ludwig a favour. It didn't matter how stiff and melodramatic the lines were, that actor was genuinely scary to watch.

The Jews, Hitler said, would come first. They would be easy to defeat, for they were a corrupt and unmanly race. A general stepped forward. Yes,
Mein Herr
, he said. Easy except for one thing. A Hebrew boy who lived among the poor. A deaf-mute. What possible trouble could such a boy cause? Hitler asked. This boy, said the general, was said to be a wonder-worker, a maker of miracles.

Nonsense! Hitler became furious. He cracked his riding crop over the general's back. I knew that the actor's coat was padded, but still I flinched. This boy, Hitler said, must be captured at once. We shall go to the ghetto of the Jews.

The curtain came down. The tent was pulled up into the flies and the stagehands hurried to set up the ghetto. I adjusted my cap and checked my pockets again. An actor in rags got behind a plywood cart as the curtain went up. From the pit came the plaintive strains of a violin. Four peasant Jews rushed onto the stage screaming for help. My heart started to race. In the arms of one, a young girl hung limp. She was the Shirley Temple look-alike, but without her curly wig, legs bare and face dirty; somehow she had become this other child. The mother cried that her daughter had fallen into the well. She had lain under the water for many minutes. They laid her carefully on the ground. Another listened to her breast. No heartbeat, she said. No breath, said someone else. The mother began a terrible wailing.

“The boy! Call the boy who works wonders!”

Two peasants ran back into the wings and grabbed me by the arms. “Keep your focus,” one hissed. And then they were taking me downstage.

I didn't want to think about the people in the audience, so I looked down at the girl. At rehearsals she'd always squirmed and complained, but now she lay absolutely still. I was almost afraid that she really had stopped breathing. I knelt down, put my hand delicately to her mouth, and slowly drew from between her lips a blue ribbon, as if it were the water in her lungs. I drew out more and more, many feet of ribbon, until the end appeared. A peasant knelt down to listen. Still she doesn't breathe. I motioned for her to be laid atop the cart. Then I took the mother's shawl, stretching it out in front of the girl. I let it fall upon her shape as if it were a shroud. The mother began to sob quietly. I held out my hand to stay her. I concentrated on the shrouded form and reached out my hands towards it.

The girl's shawl-covered body began to rise. It rose until it hovered just above our heads. The peasants onstage gasped, cried, reached out to touch the frills of the shawl. I motioned for them to step back. I reached up, grasped a corner of the shawl, and pulled it sharply away. Nothing. The girl had vanished.

Where had the child gone? I looked at an old man and gestured to him. The old man said, “We must put our trust in the God who made us His chosen people.” I waved the shawl in the air and let it settle onto the ground. I pinched it at the centre and slowly pulled it up. As it rose, the shawl took on the shape of a figure, making the audience gasp. I pulled it away to reveal the young girl, her eyes closed. She wavered as if about to fall, but a peasant caught her. The girl opened her eyes. She looked about as if waking from a dream.

“Mamma?”

The mother rushed to take the girl in her arms. Everyone laughed, cried, spoke to one another, danced about. Only I remained still. And then the musicians struck up a military march. Two Nazis goose-stepped onto the stage, followed by Hitler himself. And behind him, four more soldiers pulled an iron cage on wheels. Inside the cage, the lion paced and turned and even roared. The audience's excited reaction rose above the music. Hitler came right up to me, and when he spoke, his spittle hit my face. “Hold this boy!”

Two solders grabbed me and I pretended to struggle. Meanwhile, two others dropped a big sheet over the top of the cage, covering the side facing the audience. The sheet had a large red swastika on it. The soldiers dragged me up to the cage. One reached for the latch on the door, but I could still see the lion, its eyes fearful even as it roared again. An actor behind hit the lever, secretly tipping the floor and causing the startled lion to slide into the hidden compartment. Up came my costume from below, along with a dummy of me.

The soldiers made a big show of throwing me into the cage and shutting the door.

Did I hear my mother cry out, or was that somebody else? Quickly I pulled on the lion costume, legs first, then arms and head, pulling up the inside zipper. It was heavily padded and reinforced to make me look much larger. The realism was good enough to briefly fool an audience that had already seen a real lion and believed it still to be there. I kept hunched over the bloody dummy of myself while the stage lights, already dim, flashed blue and red.

I heard Hitler shout the cue for the sheet to be pulled away from the cage. As it came up, I made as if I were disembowelling the dummy, moving as viciously as I could. I threw myself onto the cage door, bringing it crashing down. The impact on my hands and knees made me yelp with pain. The audience screamed while Hitler too cried out in terror and fled the stage, even as I yanked off the lion's head and revealed the boy underneath.

My mother, Bella Kleeman, threw open the door of the theatre and walked furiously up Yonge Street. A light rain fell. What she would do with her son when he came home! When had all this happened? What sort of people was he associating with? Really, she was the one who ought to be smacked, lost in her own suffering and pleasure. How had she missed the end of his childhood?

Sigismond Eisler saw her leave. He wanted to catch up but thought better of it and stooped to tie his shoe. He wondered if he and Bella were over. Outside, he pulled his hat low to keep the rain out of his eyes. It had been nine weeks since he had heard from his wife and child. His eyes filled. Maybe they were in hiding somewhere in the countryside. Maybe they were still safe.

This is what my father thought:
My son has turned out to be clever
. He didn't get up from his seat but remained as the band played and a dancing couple came on. So he had passed something on to the boy.

A passing automobile threw up a sluice of dirty water that soaked the hem of Miss Pensler's dress. She felt a glow of pride for the boy who had come to her wanting a book. Getting into a cab, she opened her purse and fished out a pack of Buckinghams. For a reason she couldn't fathom, she thought of her father, who had been hit by a delivery truck in front of the Telegram building when she was five years old. The match flared and she drew on the cigarette. She could remember only one image of him, standing in his undershirt in the kitchen, peeling an apple.

Corinne's father held her arm tightly. He walked her to the front of the theatre, but she stopped and asked if he would wait a minute for her. He looked hard at her and then he said all right. Corinne hurried back inside. She went up to the ticket booth, politely asked for a sheet of paper and a pen, and then wrote a single line. She folded the paper and wrote
To Benjamin Kleeman
on it before giving it to the ticket seller. Then she went back to her father and the two of them walked quickly down to the station. Her father had just enough time to change into his uniform before they boarded.