A Day of Small Beginnings (36 page)

“What do we believe?” Ellen had asked.

“In nature,” her dad had said.

“You don’t have to
believe
in nature,” Ellen had argued. “Nature is all around us. You can touch it. What if God made nature?”

“There is no such thing as God,” her father had said.

She knew she’d hit the outer wall of what could be discussed. And that night with Grandpa, she knew she was taking a chance
asking him about heaven too. The thing she didn’t understand was why they got so upset with her for asking.

“Oy, Gottenu,” Grandpa had said again.

Then they were both quiet. She had stared at his bald head. Its shape reminded her of an egg.

He’d cleared his throat. “The only story about heaven is there is no story.”

“How come?”

“Because if they shot a rocket up in the sky that could go forever, it would never reach anything.”

“You mean no gates? No walls? Nothing? Just more space?”

“Yeh.”

His certainty had amazed her.

“That’s scientific,” he’d continued. “Heaven is for the stupidstitious.”

“Stupidstitious!” She had laughed, edging her way into his orbit.

Grandpa Isaac had laughed too, which was rare. She’d wrapped her arms around him, basking in his precious warmth until, without
warning, he’d stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and startled her by walking out of the room without delivering his usual
clumsy kiss good night. She didn’t try to call him back. Even at that age, she knew her grandfather’s power to dispense love
was limited.

Ellen never asked Grandpa Isaac to tell her another story, and he never did. But ever after, she could not believe in God.
That would be “stupidstitious.”

Years later, in high school and in college, she would lie awake, working out arguments for believing in a Supreme Being. But
even when she’d decided it was as plausible for there to be a Supreme Planner behind the Big Bang as for matter and energy
to create the universe on their own, she’d found herself returning to the image of Grandpa’s rocket, hurtling through an infinite
universe without a God or heaven capable of blocking its way. A cold, lonely feeling would come over her, as if she’d been
left alone in the dark.

By the time Ellen descended Wawel Hill, the rain had stopped. She ordered a coffee at a small café at the base, unable to
face the long evening alone in her room. Families and couples went by. No one spoke to her, or even met her eyes. They were
all engaged in the earnest business of living daily life. Only she had to pretend a purpose in being in Kraków. She felt anxious
again, and horribly lonely.

The July air was warm, and a feathery light brushed the city. She wandered south along the riverbank, intending to make a
slow, wide circle back to the hotel.

On a whim, she turned inland and noticed immediately that the neighborhood, identified as Kazimierz on her map, had changed.
The architecture seemed duller, in a late-nineteenth-century way. Many windows were shattered or missing panes. Her pulse
quickened with excitement at being off the beaten path.

At a nearly deserted marketplace a few blocks east, several old women in nylon kneesocks and cotton skirts stood under canopies
gathering single eggs, small bottles of milk, apples, and garden greens from makeshift tables. They didn’t try to sell Ellen
anything. She passed through, feeling invisible.

She walked beneath a stone archway and eventually came to a shadowy street called Józefa, no wider than a compact car. For
some reason, the name caught her eye. Probably because, unlike most Polish names, it was so easy to pronounce. As she ventured
down it, the bustle of human activity disappeared so quickly, she wondered if she’d entered an area closed for renovation.

There was almost no one around. The carved double doors lining the street were falling off their hinges, their stately wooden
crests almost worn away. She noticed long, deep gouges on the right sides of doorposts and wondered what this meant. Window
glass was broken or missing, the empty spaces crudely covered with nailed plywood. Whole sections of stone facade were exposed,
revealing dark, rough wounds in the buildings.

A thin middle-aged man, his jacket and trousers frayed and out of shape, swept dirt from a cobbled corner lot pockmarked with
sand pits. Wordlessly, a stout woman with a thick cotton scarf around her head bent over a dustpan, brushing in refuse. The
smells of desolate, musty alleyways wafted into the shadows of the street, gathering pungency with the dust. Ellen’s cowboy
boots echoed on the narrow sidewalk. This silence, in the middle of a city, unnerved her.

The street ended at a large, rectangular plaza, with cars parked in the center. It was marked “Szeroka.” She noticed a little
grassy island on the north end, circumscribed by a black wrought-iron fence and heavy chains, and was attracted to this welcome
break from the stone cityscape. A large, irregular stone, embedded with a plaque, jutted from the earth, breaking the symmetry
of the fence.

Ellen was surprised to see a Star of David at the left corner of the plaque. Three paragraphs followed, each in a different
language. The first paragraph looked like Polish. The third was Hebrew. The middle one, in English, read: “Place of meditation
upon the martyrdom of sixty-five thousand Polish citizens of Jewish nationality from Kraków and its environs killed by the
Nazis during World War II.”

Realizing that she had apparently stumbled into an old Jewish neighborhood, Ellen pivoted a half circle and stared down the
length of the empty square. The buildings, uneven in size and material, must have looked the same when the Nazis were there,
only perhaps less dilapidated. The sky reflected in every window, like a series of framed photographs. She was shaken by the
thought that fifty years ago, on an evening perhaps just like this one, they might have reflected the sky like this, camouflaging
the last Jews hiding inside.

She knew it was crazy for her to become overwrought about Kraków’s Jews, to be carried away imagining the presence of dead
souls. But the little plaque, understated and seemingly forgotten, had touched her like a human hand. She felt off kilter
and disturbed, vaguely aware that her identification with the Jews might just be a way of creating a surer sense of herself
than what Pronaszko had given her that morning.

On her right, she noticed a white stucco building with Hebrew letters engraved in a half circle over the arched stone doorway.
She wondered if this might be a synagogue, although she couldn’t see inside because the arch was blocked by black iron doors.
Just then, one of the doors opened from inside, and an old man in a cap, his distended belly filling a ragged pea green sweater,
came out. He quickly shut the door behind him, as if protecting the place from intruding eyes.

Ellen now felt foolish. What did she have in common with a man like that, a man who lived as a Jew? Her Jewishness was an
absence, not a presence, a hollow corner of her being with no more to fill it than Grandma Sadie’s chicken soup and the songs
of
Fiddler on the Roof.
She had no idea what it meant beyond that. Except for friends’ Bar Mitzvahs, she’d never even been to a synagogue service.

All her life, when asked about her heritage, Ellen had always said “American,” even when she knew she was being asked if she
was Jewish. She didn’t see the point of labeling herself something that didn’t interest her. Dance and art were all the religion
she’d ever felt she’d needed.

A sweet-scented breeze blew in her face, carrying the sound of live music to her. Drawn by the beauty of the melody, she followed
it toward the southern end of the square, where a massive, fortresslike building sprawled behind a great expanse of paved
stone.

At first, Ellen thought the music came from this building. But the breeze directed her toward the adjacent side of the square.
There, above a newly renovated whitewashed building with flower boxes in the windows, hung an interesting calligraphied sign
that read
ariel
. Below this,
restauracja café
. She debated whether to go inside for dinner or whether to take the tram back to the hotel before dark.

The slow, rhythmic tune appealed to her. It was familiar somehow, lulling, comforting, and warm. Suddenly, she realized this
was the tune her grandpa Isaac used to hum when he played the card game pisha paysha with her. Of course, his version of the
tune sounded more like a march, and he wasn’t much good at staying on key, but she recognized it just the same. “What’s the
name of that song?” she’d once asked him. He’d laughed, in his
heh, heh
way, and said, “That is the ‘Foygl Tune,’” as if this was some kind of joke. Ellen hadn’t minded. She’d thought he’d called
it the “For-a-GirlTune,” and remembered it fondly, believing he had made it up for her. Only, years later, when she’d asked
him to hum it for her again, he’d looked at her blankly when she’d called it the “For-a-GirlTune.”

“The ‘Foygl Tune,’” he’d said, when he finally understood her. “A
foygl,
that’s a bird,” he’d said, as if anyone should know this. She had been so disappointed that she’d misunderstood him all those
years that she hadn’t even asked him why it was called the “Bird Tune.”

Just as she reached the arched threshold, the music stopped inside the café. She went in, unsure what she was pursuing but
knowing she could no more walk away now than if her grandpa Isaac himself were there.

A young woman in conservative blouse and skirt asked her if she’d like to sit in the front or in the back room.

“Who was playing that music?” Ellen asked.

The hostess smiled shyly. “They are our musicians. They are on break, for dinner. But soon, they will play again.”

From the vestibule, Ellen could see a second room, where several long tables and a few smaller ones had been beautifully set
with white linens and lit with candles. A well stocked bar ran along the back wall. “I’ll sit in the back room. That’s where
they’ll play, right?”

The hostess nodded and led Ellen to a cozy corner table. Noting the paintings of dancing Hassidim on the walls, Ellen asked,
“Is this a Jewish restaurant?”

“Jewish style,” the woman said.

Ellen must have looked confused because the hostess quickly added, “It is not kosher. We have no one for that, to make it
kosher. So...” She looked apologetic.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Ellen interjected. “I’m not kosher.”

The hostess smiled and handed her a menu. “Many of the tourists are disappointed with us.”

“Do many tourists know about this restaurant?” Ellen asked, slightly disappointed that tourists had found the place at all.
She wanted to believe she’d discovered a bit of hidden Kraków.

“Oh, yes,” the hostess assured her. “We are well known. In fact, there is a group of Americans coming soon. You should stay.”

Normally, Ellen probably would have headed for the door at the mention of American tourists. But she wanted to hear more of
her grandfather’s music. And she was lonely.

Ten minutes later, about fifteen Americans crowded into the tiny back room, stereotypically loud and aggressive about where
they wanted to sit. Ellen knew them all without knowing any of them. The Uncle Mervs from New Jersey, the Sylvias from Brooklyn,
the perennially searching single Debbies and Stacys, each with her own self-conscious
look.
But as she listened to the way they joked and complained to one another, Ellen actually felt relieved to be in the presence
of people who sounded like home.

During her second course of chicken with mushrooms, the musicians filed in, bearing a viola, a bass, and an accordion. Each
wore a fedora that hid his face. In their white shirts, vests, and black trousers, they looked strangely like Orthodox Jews.
The bass player towered over the other two. He opened their set with a tune whose slow upbeat brought to Ellen’s mind a line
of men brushing their feet off the floor in unison, their arms around each other’s shoulders. It didn’t quite sound like Jewish
klezmer music. She wasn’t sure if this was because the wild, laughing clarinet was missing or because of something else.

“I heard the musicians are all goyim. Fake Jews!” one of the Americans said. The group laughed.

Ellen became annoyed with them again. “I’ll have some tea, please,” she told the waitress. One of the Mervs from New Jersey
turned to her. He was a tall man, strongly built, with glasses and salt-and-pepper hair. A lawyer, she guessed. “Where you
from?” he asked.

“Massachusetts. But I live in New York.”

“So do I. Upper West Side. So what’s a nice Jewish girl doing all by herself in a country like this?”

Before she could respond, he reached out his hand. “Sy Messner,” he said jovially. A few of the people seated around him turned
to her and offered greetings.

Ellen smiled back, unsure whether to be pissed off that Sy Messner assumed she was Jewish or touched by the way he talked
as if she was a family member. With a certain reserve, she told them about her stay in Kraków.

“We belong to Temple Beit Tikva in New York,” Sy told her. “A few of our congregants are Holocaust survivors. They wanted
to return to Poland, and we came along for support. Let me tell you, I could use some support myself right now. We just spent
the last six hours at Auschwitz. Have you been there yet? It’s less than an hour west of here.”

The barman suddenly lifted a menorah onto the counter and proceeded to light its seven white candles.

A woman named Esther shook her head. “Oh my God. It’s Friday night. They think they’re lighting Shabbos candles!” Looks of
mocking incredulity were traded around the table.

Ellen looked away. Far from causing her offense, she thought the candles had been lit out of respect.

Soon after, the tall bass player traded his instrument for a guitar and played her grandpa’s “Foygl Tune.” Again, Ellen marveled
at how he had transformed the march into a hauntingly lyrical tune, slow and soulful, but airy and somehow playful too. He
had dropped in little hops so that the tune seemed to totter and almost fall, only to be caught at the last moment.