A Day of Small Beginnings (10 page)

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 made 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.

Shah, shah, Itzik,
I said,
You’ll plant your soul in American soil and grow there. It will be fine. You’ll be safe.
I said this maybe as much for myself as for him.

Itzik gripped the windowsill and hummed Aaron’s tune off key, as if it were the only thing he had left in the world. Over
and over he hummed the tune, my tune, until he’d transformed the sweet Hassidic melody into a plodding march. His cap, pulled
over his brows, hid the tears that didn’t stop until late in the day, when we reached the German border.

The German officials let him pass without questioning the papers that identified him as Leo Rudovsky. It was as if once they
saw his ticket for the ship docked in Antwerp, he was no longer of any consequence to them. What did they care about a Jewish
boy? they seemed to say as they returned his papers. He’d soon be gone.

When the train left the station, I got
schpilkes
—nervousness I couldn’t quiet. At first I thought this was because I didn’t want to go. Poland was where I belonged, with
generations of my family. But I’d accepted that the Omniscient One had decided Poland wasn’t where Itzik belonged, and if
this was His test of my loyalty to the child He’d given me, so be it. I made ready for the crossing.

I should have remembered that God responds to our prayers in strange and mysterious ways. When the train crossed the border,
a dark whirling cloud came upon us. With deafening noise it swept me from Itzik. My vision, blurred and doubled as it was,
faded until I could not see at all. I began to sink, slowly, softly. When my sight returned, there was nothing but the color
blue, only blue. I felt a certain buoyancy and tried to speak, to say, Gottenu, where am I? But even my breath was bound,
trapped in a liquid universe.

Master of the Universe,
I protested.
Is this Your judgment of me, an afterlife of exile in the waters of Your creation? Is this my punishment for breaking the
chain of generations? Does it not move You that I repent? The sin of childlessness was mine, not Berel’s. I know now what
I did not know in life, that the child nurtures Man as Man nurtures God.
Fear made my tongue wag still harder.
Almighty Creator, why did You give me a child, only to take him away before I could put something of You in him?

God did not answer me. As for Itzik, not a sound from him either. I waited desperately for his prayers, that they might redeem
me. Even so, I told myself, surely a God of Justice would not have returned me to the living only to punish my sins. Surely
there was a reason He had chosen me, not Ruchelle Cohen, to lead Itzik from Poland. Maybe He only meant I should believe myself
condemned to eternal exile so that I would know the full sweetness of redemption when it came.

I clung to this
midrash
—this interpretation—like a drowning person clings to the branch. But I would be lying if I did not say I was also driven
nearly mad to find myself floating in that vast blueness, helpless and insignificant as a fleck of dust. I waited, suspended
between grief and wonder at the awesome power of God.

Then, without warning, a living soul came to me. It had lost its way to God’s great light. This was not Itzik, but someone
from our town, one of those rare souls whose flame burns into the world beyond. My father used to tell me some souls suffer
so profoundly they transcend the world, but I had not believed him until this one shone on me in the blue.

God the Joker has answered me at last, I thought. I am to guide this soul also, like Itzik, to where it needs to go. And indeed,
when I touched that soul I emerged briefly from exile. What that man, that beautiful man, saw of me, I cannot say. I only
know that with him, I had some peace, enough to give me hope of return to rest with my body, and some respite from the terror
of my entombment in the blue.

The silence in that place was broken only once. The loud echo of a ram’s horn passed me like a comet. On its tail rode my
father’s voice, clear as in life.
Be vigilant and await the coming of Aaron’s sister, Miriam,
he called to me.
Return her timbrel and she will make an opening for you to return.

I waited. I became vigilant. I listened for the shake of a timbrel and wondered what it could mean.

Time passed. Itzik went to his final rest. I felt his uncooked soul return, exhausted, to the firmament.
Master of the Universe,
I prayed,
let it not end here. Let me not end in this blue water.

NATHAN

In the tree’s higher branches the crows sit,

Seven across, sunlight shining off the black crowns of their heads

They recite their opinions of the dead

Tah! Tah!

Their beaks bobbing over the bones

Tah! Tah!

And with spread wings they descend to earth

To walk among us on two legs

Lingering at our feet.

9

S
HORTLY AFTER HE ARRIVED AT
W
ARSAW’S
O
KECIE AIRPORT IN
May 1991, Professor Nathan Linden was paged repeatedly by loudspeaker. He didn’t respond. Perhaps he didn’t recognize the
Polish pronunciation of his name. More likely, he didn’t listen to the broadcast. At fifty-nine, Nathan had become adept at
insulating himself from inconsequential stimuli, and that afternoon he was wholly intent on finding his colleague, Professor
Czesław Dombrowski, of the History Department at Warsaw University, who was supposed to meet him at the baggage claim.

Nathan circled the room several times, discreetly attempting to make eye contact with men he thought looked like Polish academics.
He began to imagine how he would respond to Dombrowski’s words of welcome, and even how he would deflect Dombrowski’s apologies
for not recognizing him immediately. By the fourth or fifth time around, he was becoming irritable and tense, and all but
ready to concede that his wife had been right. This trip had not been worth the trouble.

Four months earlier, the invitation to Poland had arrived at Nathan’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He’d found the letter
in the foyer mail tray and had called upstairs to his wife, Marion, with the news.

“Poland? Of all places!” had been her reaction.

The Victorian’s stairs had creaked like old bedsprings under her feet as she’d descended. He was charmed by his home’s idiosyncrasies.
After thirty years, its gracious architecture still gave him a sense of accomplishment.

The winter sun had lit Marion’s salt-and-pepper hair as she’d stood on the landing. He’d smiled contentedly up at her, his
bride. “They’ve asked me to lecture on constitutional paradigms,” he’d said. “It’s been a year since the Communist Party’s
been dissolved. After the Round Table Agreements between the government and the opposition last year, they’ve had the apparatus
of a democracy in place. But they’re still living under a Soviet-style constitution. It’s a three-day trip. What do you think?”