A Day of Small Beginnings (56 page)

He opened the trunk and took out the stone, cradling it until he could remove the rag Głwacki had given him. He threw it
on the ground like a soiled diaper.

She touched the stone, trying to conceive that her grandpa Isaac had broken it in two, that this was indeed the lower half
of Freidl’s stone.

They scrubbed it with well water until every lettered indentation was clear of dirt and they could see that on its face, its
borders were carved with what appeared to be the bases of two candlesticks. Between them were several lines of large Hebrew
letters.

“You should bring back the other part, so they can be read together,” he said.

She passed her hand over the Hebrew inscription at the center of the stone. “I wish I could read the words.”

Marek held her. Her whole body began to shake from the tension of the afternoon. He soothed her, told her she had been very
patient with Głwacki and even with him. She smiled at him. He told her that Rafael would be so happy to see them, that they
should go to him now. And she agreed. All during their drive back to Rafael’s house, he caressed her wrist with his thumb.

W
hen Rafael saw them park in front of his house, he opened the door and raised his hands above his head, shaking them, as if
he didn’t know what else to do with them.

Marek took the stone, now wrapped in clean cloths, from the trunk of the Fiat and held it up like an offering.

Rafael began to weep.

Ellen ran to him. Marek followed, and together they went inside in a triumphant procession. Marek laid the still-covered stone
on the table. Rafael stood before it, rocking back and forth, stroking his beard, unable to take his eyes away but not touching
the stone, as if it was too much for him to unveil it yet. “Głwacki gave it to you, or you had to pay?” he finally asked.

“We paid,” Ellen said.

“We would have taken it if we had to,” Marek added indignantly.

Rafael said nothing.

“I’m sorry we were away so long. It was very dirty; we stopped to make it clean,” Marek said.

Rafael turned to him. “This was a great mitzvah you did. A blessing. I did not think he would give it back. Never.” He frowned.
“For Głwacki, this means he has lost his fear. They say Lipman and Kravitz used to cover his dreams with their ashes, aleichem-sholem.”

Marek bit his upper lip. “Those are the names he said to me. He said the Nazis got them, the two Jews that hid in his barn.
He said he did not take their gold.”

Rafael rubbed his eyes tiredly. “He took their gold. He took what they had. And after, he went looking for Nazis that he could
denounce them to get them out of his barn.”

Marek looked at Ellen, who had turned pale realizing that Głowacki, the man she had just met, had done this. She remembered
his smile.

Yet she thought it strange that Rafael was taking the time to talk about Lipman and Kravitz when, after almost a century,
Freidl’s stone had just been returned. Perhaps it was his way of coping with the enormity of a moment he had spent so much
of his life anticipating. She uncovered the stone so he could finally see it.

He began to rock from the waist up.
Boruch atah Adonoi, Eloheinu melech ha-oylom ha-Tov v’ha-Mayteev.
He rocked. He threw his whole body into his prayer, overtaken by his lament.

Ellen shivered, anxious that he was preparing himself, bolstering his will to let Freidl go. She realized too that he now
probably saw the Angel of Death as close as the end of his nose, as he had said. “Rafael, what do the words on the stone mean?”

Rafael, oblivious to her, continued to rock and pray.

“Rafael!”

Startled, he opened his eyes.

“I can’t read the Hebrew,” she pleaded with him.

He became still and pointed to the words on the stone. “
‘She died on the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan in the year 665.’
This would be for the Jewish calendar year 5665, 1905 to you. He continued his translation, pointing to where the corresponding
Hebrew words appeared.
‘May her soul be bound up in the knot of life.’
” One of his hands began to tremble, then the other.

Ellen was afraid he might be having a stroke. “Rafael, what’s the matter?” she said. “Marek, help me get him to his chair.”

With one sweep of his arm, Marek grabbed the chair and steadied Rafael so that he could sit down. “I will get you a glass
of water,” he said, and went to the kitchen.

Ellen kneeled before Rafael, and he leaned toward her, his torso almost collapsed over the arm of the chair.

“Her way back to the grave, to rest with her body, God has blocked with cut stones, as it is written in
Eicha
—Lamentations.”

He raised his right hand and dropped it, dejected. “Another year has come. We are nearing the ninth day of the month of
Av,
Tisha Bov, when a Jew reads Eicha.”

Ellen swallowed hard. Was she not a Jew because she did not know, had never heard of Tisha Bov? She promised herself to read
Eicha, Lamentations, when she returned to Kraków. She looked at Rafael and imagined death itself was on his breath. It had
deepened his voice so much that it was difficult for her to understand him.

“Please, don’t go,” she begged.

Marek stood still in the kitchen doorway, as if he knew he should not intrude upon them.

Ellen reached for the glass of water he held in his hand. He gave it to her and retreated to the kitchen.

Rafael took a sip. It seemed to revive him slightly. “Do not forget what you owe to Freidl,” he said.

“What should I do for her then?”

He closed his eyes. “Once, she told me, her father came to her, on the echo of a ram’s horn. It passed her so fast, like a
comet. He said,
Be vigilant and await the coming of Aaron’s sister, Miriam. Return her timbrel, and she will make an opening for you to return
.” He cleared his throat several times. Then he opened his eyes and gazed at Ellen.

“Freidl showed me something in the Torah about Miriam,” she said, hoping to engage him, to bring him back. “I’ve been reciting
it to myself so often, I’ve memorized it. It goes,
Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with
timbrels. And Miriam chanted for them: Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously./Horse and driver He has hurled into
the sea.
” She looked at him hopefully.

Rafael made an effort to smile. “Years ago,” he said quietly, “Freidl asked me, Why Miriam? I had no answers for her. For
years, I studied the holy books. I asked, Why was Miriam so important for her in the eyes of God? I thought maybe it had to
do with your grandfather hurling Jan Nowak, the horse and driver, yeh, into the sea of death.” He shrugged. “But then you,
Ellen Leiber, granddaughter of Itzik the Faithless, arrived in Poland to dance.” He cast his hands upward weakly, in what
seemed sheer amazement. “Who can understand God’s plan? To dance!”

Rafael put his hands on the table and spread his arthritic fingers. “You are her Miriam.” He managed to give her a wink.

But Ellen was skeptical. “Do you really think Freidl will be returned to her grave with a dance and a timbrel?”

“I do not
think
it. I can only
believe
it,” he said. “What else can I believe, with what I have seen in my life?”

Ellen looked at the stone, frustrated to tearfulness at not knowing what to do. From the corner of her eye she could see Marek’s
shocked expression.

“I think you must join the stones again,” Marek said. “I think you must bring back the top half from America.”

Rafael sniffed. “Advice from the
shaygets?
” he said. “In America the stone is safe.”

But Marek insisted. “It does not belong in America. It belongs in Poland, where she belonged.”

“And what will protect it from the vandals? The bones and remnants of Zokof’s Jews?”

“We will protect it. It will be safe,” Marek assured Rafael. “We will talk to the city fathers. They should know about it.
They should make this their memorial too, like the one in the town square.”

“But who’s going to make a memorial of Freidl’s stone?” Ellen asked.

“I know the man who can do this,” Marek said. “My family knows him. He is a stonemason, and he worked on the Jewish memorial
at Kazimierz Dolny a few years ago. People say he is a Jew because he does not go to Mass. Like a Jew he goes on Fridays,
they say.” He paused, looked away.

“What’s the matter?” Ellen asked.

“I remember my father defended him. He said, ‘We all know
ukasz Rakowski is a Catholic. People should not blacken his name.’”
He glanced quickly at Rafael, and away again. “I never thought about it, that what my father said is an insult to someone
who is not Catholic, maybe even to
ukasz. Because
ukasz never said yes or no. He just rubbed his hands, the way he does.”
Marek shook his head. “I do not know if
ukasz is a Jew or a Pole, but I think if I ask him, he will make a monument for Freidl
that will show people she is someone important.”

Rafael looked appalled at the idea. “You want to invite people to come here, to stand on the graves like a park?”

“Like a sacred, remembered place,” Marek said. “Have you been to Kazimierz Dolny?”

“I do not go to those places.”

“They made a memorial wall with hundreds of broken Jewish gravestones climbing the hill. In one place it is split up and down
with a crack—for the sudden destruction of the Jewish community. When you step through the crack, behind the wall, you are
in a deep forest where there are the old graves, normal graves.” He suddenly seemed aware of his animation and of Ellen and
Rafael looking at him. “Anyway,
ukasz Rakowski will know how to make something special for you.”