A Day of Small Beginnings (11 page)

Marion Linden was used to her husband’s pedagogic style of speaking. She went to him in the foyer and took the letter from
his hand. “What about your Prague trip in the fall?” she’d said. “Maybe it would be better to schedule them back to back.”

They’d passed through the short hallway to the kitchen. He’d seated himself at the table. She’d heated the water for tea.

“No, I can’t wait for the fall,” he’d said. “If I wait, even for a few months, the mood could swing in another direction,
and they might not be welcoming an American’s opinion.”

“It’s a long way to go for just three days.”

“I know. But my suspicion is, the lecture at the university is just window dressing, an introduction. If they’re interested
in what I have to say, they’ll put me in touch with the people in parliament who are drafting the new constitution. That could
be pretty interesting, I think.” He’d given her the sly grin he knew she loved. “Besides, how can I turn down Dombrowski when
he wrote that I was ‘Harvard’s most justifiably eminent constitutional scholar?’”

She’d laughed. “Nathan, I think you’re going to Poland.”

But now, as Nathan stood in the airport with his bags collected, no one seemed to be looking for him. “Professor Nathan Linden,”
the loudspeaker announced again, and this time, he heard.

“I am so terribly sorry,” Dombrowski said on the telephone to which Nathan was directed by an airport official. “I had hoped
we could have a private talk on our way to your hotel, since that won’t be possible at the reception this evening, with all
the people who will want to speak with you. Unfortunately, just a few hours ago my father became seriously ill, and I must
go to him at the hospital.”

“Of course,” Nathan said, already bracing himself for the unpleasant task of getting into the city on his own.

Dombrowski was anxious. “Do you think you can find the Marriott shuttle bus, or should I try to find someone else to drive
you there?”

Nathan slid his fingers under his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “No, it’s quite all right. I’ll take the shuttle. I hope your
father feels better soon. I’ll see you later at the reception.”

Outside, the terminal’s awning was no protection from the hard, slanting rain that had begun to fall. Nathan opened the mini
travel umbrella that Marion, as always, had carefully tucked into the bottom of his carry on bag, but he quickly became uncomfortably
damp.

By the time the Marriott bus pulled up and opened its doors like a pair of arms, he was no longer irritated that his request
for a Polish hotel had been ignored. Much as it embarrassed him to look like a garden-variety American tourist staying at
an American hotel, the Marriott was at least going to be comfortable, and comfort, he admitted to himself, was what he wanted.

He remembered, with some discomfort, a conversation he’d had with his daughter, Ellen, when he’d last visited her in Manhattan.
They’d been having coffee at the café downstairs from her apartment, when a tightly massed group of Japanese had passed by.
“A tourist is a silly creature—a duck out of water,” he’d commented. “If you travel with a purpose, Ellen, you’ll always have
the dignity of an insider.”

She’d just smiled and made a point of shaking her long copper corkscrew curls, the way she had since she was a little girl.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a stranger, Dad,” she’d said. “No one belongs
everywhere.
You go around the world being met at airports and taken around by academics who make you feel as if you’ve never left home.
Where’s the adventure in that?”

He watched the driver load wet luggage onto the Marriott bus and thought,
An adventure like this, I could do without.
That was the kind of thing his pop used to say. But Pop would never have gotten on a plane to Poland. “What do I need with
such a place?” he would have said, as if it was offensive to even suggest the idea of traveling. Which was why Pop had never
gone anyplace.

Nathan looked out the window as the bus headed into the city. Warsaw’s architectural theme appeared to be a harsh display
of Soviet bureaucratic power. The drab concrete-block buildings had been dropped, seemingly at random, onto littered, uncut
grass, gracelessly traversed with unpaved footpaths. It depressed him even more to see the neon lights of McDonald’s and the
massive warehouselike IKEA inflicting their new kind of insult upon the city.

Yet he was relieved when the Marriott Hotel, with its lobby brightly lit with chandeliers and done up in marble, turned out
to be a replica of its high-end American counterparts, and just as comfortable. As was his custom after overseas flights,
he unpacked, closed the curtains of his room, and took a long nap.

He awoke feeling much better and was getting dressed for the reception being given in his honor at the home of someone in
the History Department, when the phone rang. Dombrowski again. It seemed his father was now in critical condition. He was
terribly embarrassed he hadn’t been able to make further arrangements. There was a painful pause on the line; then Dombrowski
said he would call someone to take Nathan to the reception.

Now, Dombrowski had been in contact with Nathan for almost five months. Nathan felt as if he already knew the man. He liked
him too. “It’s quite all right. There’s no need to trouble yourself. I’ll have the concierge call a taxi,” he assured him.
What else could he say? Dombrowski was clearly distraught and suffering from conflicted responsibilities. The whole thing
was horribly awkward.

Downstairs, the taxi driver, summoned by the hotel, seemed to know the address Nathan handed him on a slip of paper. Even
though he didn’t speak much English, he had the ramrod posture of a man who knew what he was about. It therefore came as a
great surprise to Nathan when after about twenty minutes the fellow stopped in the middle of a collection of gray cereal-box
buildings, arbitrarily clumped at odd angles, and left him to fend for himself. “Number eight,” the driver said, pointing
vaguely at one of the buildings. And as if to clear up any doubt Nathan might have had about what he was expected to do with
this information, the driver put out his hand for the fare and added, “You go.”

H
alf an hour after he’d stepped out of the taxi, Nathan was still wandering around, unable to get his bearings. Gray pavement,
unadorned by a single tree, stretched before him like a blank canvas. He cursed the taxi driver under his breath. Then he
cursed himself for paying him what he assumed must have been a small fortune.

It was six thirty. By now he was supposed to be in building number eight. They were waiting for him in apartment twenty-three.
He looked up at the tiny windows of the apartment buildings around him, hoping for some direction. But all he saw was a grid
of panes, many of them piled high with disarrayed possessions.

He checked his watch again, dreading the prospect of having to ask someone for help, of being forced to admit his unfamiliarity
with the language and the neighborhood. It didn’t matter to Nathan that anyone could get lost in a city. He hated to appear
unknowledgeable, even about things that he could not reasonably be expected to know. This, and his stubbornness about not
being interfered with on such occasions, had driven Marion and his daughter, Ellen, to distraction more times than any of
them could recall. But now, even if he had wanted to ask, there was no one around to give directions except a small boy on
roller skates who disappeared quickly around a corner.

He began to talk to himself in a monotone hum that disguised the words, an old habit that usually calmed him. “Building number
eight. Is this number eight? This is seventeen. Here is four. There’s no number on that one.” The sun was setting, but sweat
gathered around his collarbones in the warm May air. Droplets had already begun a slow descent through the hair on his chest.
His ascot stuck to his neck, the silk unmoored from its careful placement at the center of his white shirt under the brown
tweed jacket. He reached up to remove it but stopped when he realized that without the ascot he would appear unprofessional.
What would they think of him?

“Damn,” he muttered. Why had he been so nonchalant? Why hadn’t he at least insisted on more detailed instructions from Dombrowski?

He paused to look around again and to adjust his glasses, which were sliding down the thin ridge of his nose. He reached for
the keloid scar under the hair at the back of his head, another nervous habit that calmed him. With several short strokes
of his fingertips he also combed back some strands at the top of his head.

Four men ambled toward him from across the parking lot to his left, arms clasped around each other for support, bodies sagging
from what looked to Nathan like the result of years of too much alcohol and starchy food. Their loud song sent him scurrying
toward the protective shadows of a numberless building. It was an instinct brought from childhood. He had always hugged the
buildings as a boy, trying to hide his small, skinny frame from the swaggering young toughs, Irish boys mostly, whose fathers
had taught them to be proud of their fists. He remembered, as his jacket now scraped against the rough cement, how he’d wished
for a father who’d put some manly energy into his son instead of merely spewing sarcastic remarks about life, as Pop did,
from his third-story window.

The men drew closer. Nathan felt a sick wave in his gut. It whorled around his stomach and into his chest, as familiar and
inevitable as the game of taunts and fists that used to follow. He put his head down and picked up his pace, aware that since
his arrival in Poland, he’d felt a certain sense of threat, which he’d dismissed as irritation at not having been treated
by his hosts in the usual deferential manner.

“Calm yourself. Nothing’s going to happen here. You’ll find your way. You’ve done it all over the world,” he hummed. But he
could barely catch his breath.

The drunks were laughing now. He thought they were pointing at him, so he refused to look at them, to give them an opening.
He reached a door and pulled himself inside, dizzy with panic.

The men passed, lolling their heads from side to side like bulls. He watched them through the small window in the door until
they were gone and it was silent. He stepped back, straightened his ascot, ashamed of the fear that had left half-moon sweat
stains spreading in the armpits of his shirt.

The hallway, lit by dim, uncovered lightbulbs at either end, stank from rotting food, like cooked cabbage, he thought. Over
a doorpost, like a miracle, he saw the number eight. “Thank God,” he said, weak with relief. He hurried up the stairs, found
apartment twenty-three, and gave several short knocks. A tall man in a white knit boatneck shirt opened the door and extended
his hand. On his third finger, he wore a large ring with an ornate crest.

“Welcome to my home, Professor Linden! We hope you had no difficulty finding us,” the man said.

Nathan smiled. “No. No difficulty at all.”

I
heard the words, saw the two men in the doorway. Such bright lights they had inside. Thanks God, I was delivered from my blue
exile! My eyesight was still no good, everything in two’s and three’s, but I could see that I was not among Jews there. They
were beardless men, their clothes strangely cut. And the women—I was ashamed to look at them. Uncovered arms and skirts so
short you could not imagine. Why do You send me here? I asked the Almighty.

From Him, I got no answers, but I remembered my poppa calling to me. “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 had said. “Why Miriam, Poppa, why a timbrel?”
I called out. From him I got no answer either. But what joy, my voice was returned to me at last. I was sure these strangers
would hear me, but I needn’t have feared. No one turned in my direction.

Nathan Linden, a man whose false confidence already made me nervous, shook the Pole’s hand and went inside.

10

T
HE MAN AT THE DOOR INTRODUCED HIMSELF AS
P
ROFESSOR
Stanisław Załuski. “On behalf of the entire History Department,” he said, “I wish to apologize for Professor Dombrowski,
that he could not bring you to my home this evening and that he will miss our reception. His father’s illness, you see.”