A Day of Small Beginnings (57 page)

But Rafael was not convinced. “First, if the stone from America is brought here, you will have two stones for Głwacki to
steal. I think it is safer in America.” He stroked his beard worriedly; then he seemed to give up. “I do not know what the
right place is. Even Freidl herself does not know.”

“It would make Freidl’s memorial whole again,” Ellen ventured. “My grandfather broke it. I should fix it. For you, Rafael,
it would be like repairing a torn oissherenishen.”

Rafael glanced at the cutouts on his wall and seemed to consider this. “I do not know,” he said. “Maybe you are right that
we should make a repair. This is the Jewish way, yes? But I must tell you that first the cemetery must have a wall.”

“Why?” Marek asked. “There aren’t any of those people you called
Kohanes
here anymore.”

Ellen was relieved he wasn’t arguing that there were still Jews around.

“Without a wall, it is not a Jewish cemetery,” Rafael responded. “Without a wall, no one can be buried there.”

“But all the people are already buried there,” Marek said.

Rafael sighed. “All but one.”

No one moved. Each of them looked at the stone.

“Then
I
will build a wall. You will tell me how,” Marek said.

“You will?” Ellen could hardly believe he was willing to put in that kind of effort.

“It is better that I make the wall. For Głwacki and the people here, it is better.” Marek looked at Rafael. Then he crossed
the room and sat down with his clasped hands bridging his knees. He bent his head, as if in supplication. “Before, when we
were in the cemetery and I talked about my uncle Leszek, who said our angels watch over us. I did not say that when he told
me the Jewish ghosts are in the trees, with the birds, and in the sky before a storm, I said, ‘Uncle Leszek that is because
God does not let Jews into heaven. They killed our Lord.’ I remember how sure I was of this. I was so sure, that I was not
sympathetic when he said to me, ‘All the dead are sacred.’ I would like to make this wall, Mr. Bergson, to my uncle Leszek’s
memory.”

The two men exchanged discreet, respectful looks. Large raindrops again began to tap against the windowpanes, and the room
became dappled with sudden changes of light.

Ellen looked at Rafael. “It’s time for us to go,” she said. “I’ll be back soon. I’ll write you to tell you when.”

Marek rose, still obviously upset.

They said their good-byes with restraint. “Do not forget Freidl,” Rafael said. “And take the gravestone with you today. It
is right that you should make a repair.”

43

E
LLEN AND
M
AREK HEADED WEST OUT OF
Z
OKOF, THROUGH
streets of houses fenced with chain link, each with their lacy curtain sheers hanging like a national flag across the front
windows. Ellen wondered what remained of the town her grandfather had known. The blotches of grass riddled with footpaths?
The slammed-on room additions of brick, stucco, wood, and stone? Her ancestral home depressed her. Her only real regret about
leaving was Rafael.

When they’d parted, he’d walked them to the threshold of his house and had stood anxiously, clasping and unclasping his knotted
hands. “Elleneh,” he’d said. “Write and tell me what’s what.”

She’d kept herself from offering him the impropriety of an embrace. “I’ll write you,” she promised again. “Don’t worry.”

He’d shrugged and turned to Marek. “Don’t worry. What does this mean?” Then, with all the awkwardness of a man long out of
the habit of hand-shaking, he stuck out his hand. “Marek, it was a blessing, what you did today,” he said earnestly. “Our
rabbis taught that by their deeds all men are equal in the eyes of God, and by their good deeds they bring God’s presence
into the world.” He nodded, his eyes full of feeling. “Today, you brought God’s presence into the world. You are a good boy,
a mensch.”

Marek had taken Rafael’s hand in his own, then clasped his other hand on top, pumping it warmly. “Thank you, Mr. Bergson,”
he said quietly.

To Ellen, the moment had felt suspended and holy.

“Come back when you can,” Rafael had said to them both. “My house has an open door.” He’d seemed almost cheery then, but the
mention of his door had only heightened Ellen’s sense of his vulnerability.

Twenty minutes later, they were on the two lane highway approaching Radom. The rain had stopped. The sun needled its way through
the clouds. Zokof had disappeared behind them, its western border marked only by a line of trees at the end of the plain.
Ellen slid the “For-a-GirlTune” cassette off the dashboard and held it protectively between her palms.

“I see you are thinking,” Marek said carefully.

She tilted the tip of the cassette to her chin. “There were holes in the blanket on his bed,” she said, more to herself than
to him. “And those sheets. I have to get him new bedding.”

“He does not need a new blanket in July,” Marek said. “In the winter, he has an eiderdown cover. Everyone has such a cover.”
He glanced at her and, perhaps, seeing her consternation, softened his tone. “This is how people in the countryside live.
It is a difficult life. You are looking with American eyes. To them, it is no problem.”

Ellen didn’t feel like arguing. She had only mentioned the bedding as a passing thought. “I guess I just can’t help being
an American.” She sighed.

Playfully, he chucked her under the chin. “I like that,” he said.

The day had begun to take its toll on her. She closed her eyes to rest, but the more she thought about it, the more it bothered
her that Rafael should not even hope for a new blanket, that he should be content, in this day and age, to ruin his eyes reading
Talmud by kerosene lamp, that he should have to put up with the difficulties of his kitchen stove, even if other people brought
him wood and coal. She pushed the cassette into the recorder.

At the first rhythmic notes of the tune, Marek began to tap his fingers on the wheel. Ellen opened her eyes and found him
looking at her, as if trying to gauge her mood. She tickled his ear.

For the next few miles, they talked about Kraków’s summer concerts, using any excuse to brush against each other’s skin, to
stroke each other’s knees and arms and shoulders. Soon they drifted into a comfortable silence. Ellen played with a lock of
hair at the back of Marek’s neck. The tune was still playing. She listened to it more closely, certain that Marek’s arrangement
would play well to a young audience. The tense rhythm was modern, edgy. It provoked a certain anxiety she liked. She admired
how he’d arranged the original tune to appear high above the musical landscape, like the comet on which Freidl’s father’s
voice rode. How had he caught that sense of something bright sinking into the fray until it disappeared? She stopped the tape.
“When we were at the Ariel Café, you said you heard prayers in the notes. What made you think of that?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “I listened to the music.”

“But what makes it a prayer?” she insisted. “What takes it to that next step, beyond something merely beautiful?”

He laughed nervously, as if he was afraid she might mock him. “It is like complete pouring out.” He squinted and shook his
head.

Ellen sensed, once again, that there was something impoverished about the atheist worldview with which she’d been raised.
She turned the tape player back on and realized, not without shame, that she envied what he knew about faith, and that she
was jealous of the authenticity he’d accomplished with music she had more right to own than he did. She looked out the window,
realizing that her dance would have to be poured out of her, and that the pouring would require resistance to her natural
urge to think.

They passed a roadside shrine of a blue-robed Virgin Mary decorated with flowers and long ribbons.
Primitive,
her mother would have called it, meaning
colorful, delightful to us,
but ultimately
childish.
Her father would have agreed. Now Ellen saw instead an adornment that marked the transformation of an earthly place into
a doorway to God, and she understood it. She thought of the other ribbon, the one that had once tied back the copper hair
of her great-aunt Hindeleh. It now lay between the pages of her little blue prayer book, hidden as her grandpa Isaac had kept
it. She dug her nails into a seam on the armrest, angered by her grandfather’s secrecy, by his refusal to listen to anyone
but himself. But for this, he would have heard the tune and Freidl’s prayer—
Every blade of grass has its own guardian star in the firmament which strikes it and commands it to grow! Let a spark be lit
in him and let him grow!

He had an
uncooked
soul, Freidl had said. Ellen refused to allow this as an excuse. He could have listened. He could have grown. He could have
spared Freidl the pain of waiting through two generations to return to her grave in peace. She was sickened by the thought
that her own inability to hear the prayers in the tune suggested she was just as uncooked as her grandfather and father. “Before
I leave Poland, I’m going to finish Freidl’s memorial,” she said.

Marek’s eyes didn’t waver from the road. “When are you leaving?”

“I can’t stay too long after the performance. I have a grant to do a new piece this fall.” The words slid out so quickly.
Not until she glanced at him, saw his pursed lips, did she regret having spoken so casually. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not looking
forward to going.”

He looked at her. “Yes, well, I never thought you are the kind of American who would like to live here in Poland. The Americans
I see who stay in Kraków are mostly confused. They think being here, behind the old Iron Curtain, is enough to make them interesting
to people back home. But what is that, Ellen, to be someplace without a purpose, only because it might be more unusual than
Paris?” He shrugged dismissively, in a manner that reminded her of Rafael.

“Maybe you’ll come visit me in New York,” she suggested, hoping he would promise her right then that he would.

He twisted a piece of loose thread off his shirt cuff and nodded. “Maybe. I would like that.”

She wasn’t sure if this was just talk or if they were making a plan. She looked at his musician’s hands, so delicate on the
wheel. It would be no different for him in New York than it would be for her in Kraków. If he came to stay he’d be just another
foreigner, driving a cab, with an occasional music gig. And even that was doubtful. What did a Polish klezmer player have
to offer in a city of real Jewish musicians? And how would she see him in America, where his Polishness would be highlighted?
Did it really not matter to her now that he wasn’t Jewish, as good as he was, and as committed to her? Her enthusiasm for
his visit became confused, and she sank into sadness. She stared at his hands, remembering how good they’d felt when he’d
spread them over her naked back and down her sides, how well those fingers knew her. She would miss the way he handled her,
his confidence in bed, his smell, his lips at her neck.

They arrived at the hotel. Marek parked the Fiat. “I hate that I have to work tonight,” he said.

Ellen held his head between her hands. “Come upstairs.”

They walked hand in hand down the street and up to her room, where he closed the curtains on the side that faced the apartment
across the narrow street.

Ellen went to him, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him. They made love until evening.

“What will you do tonight, after I am gone?” he asked.

Ellen sighed. “I’ll work. I have to. There’s so much to put together. I have all these elements, but they’re like body parts.
They’re not connected. They’re not alive. You know what I mean?”

He smiled and brushed a stray curl from her forehead. “What are your elements?”

“I have the tune, of course, and Freidl, Miriam’s timbrel from the Bible, and proverbs.” She sighed again, this time to allay
her growing anxiety, and rolled over on her back. “There’s a line that keeps floating into my head. I don’t know where it
comes from, if I read it or whatever. It goes, ‘
They have hardened their hearts to each other, like Pharaoh in Egypt, each seeing and feeling only their own martyrdom.
’”