A Day of Small Beginnings (54 page)

T
HEY RETURNED TO THE HOUSE IN MIDAFTERNOON.
R
AFAEL EXCUSED
himself and went to the outhouse in the backyard. Marek stood before one of the white paper cutouts Rafael had tacked to
the living room wall. “We call this
wycinanki,
in Polish,” he told Ellen. “We make them for holiday decorations.” He examined the paper’s semicircle of Hebrew lettering.
Beneath it, Rafael had cut a seven branched menorah and surrounded it with lions, birds, and deer perched in small, neat squares.
Marek studied the workmanship closely. “Very beautiful,” he murmured.

“Rafael calls them
oissherenishen.
” The funny-sounding Yiddish word, so evocative of her grandpa Isaac, made Ellen smile. “He says they give him something to
do, but I think he does them for Freidl. He said she used to make them too.”

Marek shook his head. “Everything is Freidl to you and him.”

Was he mocking her, she wondered, or was she just misreading him again? She turned to the window, observing Rafael’s slow
progress up the dirt path to his outhouse. “How does he manage in the middle of winter?” she said.

Marek also glanced out the window at Rafael. “It is sometimes very difficult for the old people in our country, especially
the ones like him, who are alone in the small towns. But he is fortunate to be a Jew. He can go to the synagogue in Warsaw,
and they will give him money from Americans. The Jews send it to them.” Marek brushed some remnant of the forest from his
sleeve.

Ellen felt, once again, as if she was sliding into the perilous gap that lay between them. She turned to him. “You think Polish
Jews are
fortunate?
Didn’t you notice your uncle Leszek’s Jews are ghosts?”

Marek shook his head impatiently. “Not those. The ones who survived. People say there are many more Jews in Poland now than
they tell us. Jews have more money, and in the communist times, many of them had a lot of influence. I am sorry. This is true.”
He began to examine the Hebrew books on the shelves.

Ellen stared at him. “I’m sorry too,” she said softly. “I’m sorry you think you know so much and you understand so little.
You’re standing in the house of the last Jew of Zokof. There used to be five thousand Jews living here. I don’t think the
rest of them are under the bed.”

Marek’s eyes did not waver from the books. “Maybe they moved somewhere else. Many people moved after the war,” he said evenly.

“Marek, that doesn’t make any sense. If they just left, why doesn’t anyone know where they are?”

“The government census knows where they are, and this information they keep secret.”

“So what are you saying? The country’s full of secret Jews?”

“We do not know.”

Ellen thought of her father. Proving a negative, he used to say, is a losing strategy. “Then who’s living in their houses—free,
I should point out?” she asked.

Marek’s mouth tightened into a flat line. “We did not take from the Jews. Those are stories told by outsiders, people who
do not like Poles. They are not true. Look around you. Do you think it’s possible for him to live in this town for forty-five
years after the war without Poles taking care of him? You think it is Freidl who carries his firewood?” He waved at the stove
in the kitchen. “I promise you, without his neighbors, he would not be alive today.”

Ellen flicked at her hair. “Marek, his neighbors desecrated the cemetery. You were just there.”

“It was the Nazis that did that, not the Poles,” he said. “If you do not believe that, Ellen, you go too far.”

“Too far? They stole the bottom half of Freidl’s stone.”

“You do not know this is true.” He shrugged. “We always come back to this. I promise you, Ellen, the Poles are not
all
anti-Semites.”

“Would you help me get her stone back?”

Rafael returned to the house. Marek watched him wash his hands in the basin and drop exhaustedly into a chair. “Where is the
bottom half of Freidl’s stone?” he asked.

Rafael looked up at Marek, clearly surprised. “At Władek Głowacki’s farm.”

Marek glanced at Ellen. “We are thinking we would like to get it.”

Ellen was shocked.

“The Messiah himself could come before Głwacki would give me her stone,” Rafael said. “I have tried. It was in a shed behind
the town hall. People came and took those stones for building and for making streets, the gonifs. Then Głwacki, that cham,
took Freidl’s for himself. I have heard people say he uses it to support the foundation of his barn.” Rafael turned to Ellen.
“You will go with him?”

Ellen’s heart did a little jump. She nodded, thinking he looked slightly disoriented, as if he needed time to appreciate that
it might actually be returned to him. Finally, he rubbed his hands together in a measured way. “Good,” he said. “But first,
you must have something to eat.”

Ellen smiled at him. “Marek, help me light the stove,” she said. She made the three of them a meal of eggs and onions with
bread and butter, the kind of meal her grandpa Isaac used to love, and tried not to think about what she and Marek had just
said to each other.

Rafael was delighted with the food. He adjusted his yarmulke, barely able, it seemed, to contain his happiness as he said
a prayer and spooned up the eggs. “I will tell you how to go,” he said. “At the main square, on the street next to the church,
you will see a metal fence at the corner of the second street. There is an apple tree, an old one, very twisted. Take that
street out from the town, until you see some houses with fences. You pass these and take the road to the right. Głowacki’s
place is the next one. A house and a barn you will see. After him, it is only forest.”

“How long a drive is it?” Ellen asked him.

“You could be back in an hour, if you don’t have trouble with him. He is a
shikker,
a drunk, you understand? So be careful. And watch the dogs.” He was like an officer sending his troops on a mission.

When they were ready to leave, he spoke to Marek. “It is written, ‘As the musician played, the hand of God came upon him.’
May God inspire you and bring you success. I wish you
mazel tov
—good luck.”

For a moment, Marek stood wordlessly in the doorway, seemingly dazed. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Ellen sensed that Rafael wanted to speak with her alone. “Marek, can you wait for me in the car? I want to talk to Rafael
for a minute.”

“Of course,” he said, and closed the door after himself.

A fly buzzed at the windowpane. The sky had begun to gray, and the impending rain intensified the room’s odor of dust and
old leather bookbindings.

Rafael chuckled. “Who but Freidl would find such a man?”

Ellen fingered the curtain sheers and looked out at Marek, seated in the Fiat, his long neck thrust forward with a kind of
grim determination at the task ahead. “Do you think Marek’s a mensch?”

“I think he doesn’t know what’s what from a Jew, but he has a curiosity, an interest, yes? Our music makes a spark in him.
He wants to give it life. That is good. In this instance, God takes with one hand and gives with another.” He shrugged. “What
more can you ask?”

Ellen could not entirely agree. “Something bothers me about him, Rafael,” she said. “At home, I have so many non-Jewish friends.
They don’t have this attitude. He has it less than some other Poles, but it’s there. It’s as if we’re some kind of problem
for them. And they don’t let facts get in their way. He just said that Poland’s full of Jews. Why would they even want to
believe that? It’s as if everything has another meaning to them, like there’s some big conspiracy to get them. There’s no
logic to it. They could just as easily say the Jews are this or that because the moon is made of blue cheese. It’s craziness.”
It was the first time she had articulated what she had been feeling, and it sounded so prejudiced, she scared herself.

Rafael closed his eyes and clasped his hands tightly together. “But now, you must put this from your mind,” he said. “You
cannot change them. You can only do what you must do. For me, I am responsible for my Jews in this town, even if they are
dead.” He began to rock back and forth, as if he was praying. His lips moved, but he barely made a sound. “There is no one
else to pray for them,” he said gruffly, “to say their memory should be for a blessing. And Freidl. You must understand this,
Ellen. She must rest.”

Ellen sat down on the chair opposite Rafael, feeling eerily disoriented. The sound of the ticking clock seemed to warble.
Her fingers swayed slowly, as if underwater. Large raindrops began to tap insistently against the windows, and the room became
dark with the sudden change of weather. Rafael rose and lit the lamp on the table.

“Listen to me,” he said. His voice sounded muffled to her. “Freidl does not let you see her in the empty eternity where her
soul is bound up in suffering. Her freedom to move about, to speak, to sing, everything you imagine of her, this is an illusion.”

“But she comes to me. She talks to me. I know her face. She wears a plaid shawl. Who is that, if not her?” Ellen argued.

Rafael carefully placed his hand on the table. “We say, ‘Trust that the seed you have planted will bloom in someone’s heart.’”
He raised his finger instructively. “Her planting a seed is what you see of her. That is all I could ever understand about
it.” He shrugged in his usual way.

Ellen could hear her heart’s beat. She felt dizzy as the air slowly began to circle around her. Panicked, she focused on a
tall book that stood on the shelf behind Rafael and forced herself to concentrate on it, as if she were spotting turns. The
circling sensation slowed, then stopped. Ellen took a long breath. “What was that?” she said, deeply shaken.

Rafael rapped several times on the table. “Listen to me. Ellen, you are the last generation to whom I can speak for her sake,
to tell you to listen to the still, quiet voice, to hear God’s echoes in the world. Already I feel the cold touch of the
Malach Ha-Moves
—the Angel of Death.” He brought his hand to his chest in a loose fist and beat it against his heart. “Do what you need to
do.”

She was trembling. “All right,” she said. “But for now, you should rest.”

He agreed to lie down until they returned. “When I wake up,” he said, “may God grant that I see either the Messiah or her
stone.” His laugh, rumbly and deep, made him cough as he shuffled to his bed on the other side of the room.

She left soon after he had lain down and closed his eyes, distressed at having seen how death would look on him.

42

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER,
M
AREK AND
E
LLEN BUMPED ALONG A
country road lined with poplars. The rain had passed like a mood, and the sun shone over the yellowing fields of fallow July
grass. They drove past plum orchards, stands of birch, and farms where small, mixed-breed dogs lay chained to trees or posts.
The Fiat’s wheels spun back pebbles and mud.

At last they came upon the cluster of fenced cinder-block-and-brick houses Rafael had described, their front casement windows
all shuttered closed. Ellen pointed excitedly at the fork in the road ahead. “That’s where we turn right.” Soon after, they
arrived at Władek Głowacki’s house and barn at the edge of a forest. The house was an architectural confusion of stone, brick,
and wood. About a hundred feet to its left, the ash-gray wooden barn listed precariously.

Marek parked by the side of the road, and together he and Ellen negotiated the muddied ruts of the farmer’s driveway. Several
dogs barked. Ellen slipped her arm through Marek’s. He called out, “Pan Głwacki,” just as one of the dogs burst from the
barn and tore toward them through the scattered farm equipment and the rubbish that littered the property. The dog’s speed
so alarmed Marek, he pulled Ellen behind him and called Głowacki’s name again.

A small, bony-cheeked old man in a frayed cap appeared from behind the house. “Ee-yah.” He shooed the animal away. When he
was within feet of them, Ellen saw that his face was deeply lined and bearded with white stubble. He was missing the third
and fourth fingers on his left hand. Marek took her firmly by the arm and led her forward, greeting Głwacki brightly in Polish.