Displaced Persons (31 page)

No, Tsipora, Fela had answered. She was just playing.

But Helen was back already, and Tsipora had the white case in her palm. “Helen,” she said. “Why don’t you take them? I really don’t have room.”

“No, Helen,” said Fela, harshly. Helen had dropped her arms to her side and stood still, awaiting the decision.

But Tsipora was not used to being refused. People did what she said, here in America. That was what she was like! You complimented her on a brooch she was wearing, she moved to take it off her dress to
give it to you! And to refuse was to imply her weakness; that could not be done, particularly in her widowhood. It made one afraid to speak, to say anything, for fear of provoking that tyrannical generosity. Still. A lady to the last. Tsipora had pushed the set into Helen’s coat pocket, and Helen had displayed it in front of her English paperback mysteries until she went to college. Now Fela had them herself.

T
SIPORA’S LAST YEARS HAD
been very difficult. The death of Yidl and the loss of position had meant an exiling from the main activities of her group, the gathering and the speaking. Slowly Gershom, others with money, rabbis and writers, had taken over her legacy. But now! Who had not remembered Tsipora in her impoverished years following Yidl’s death, now could not be quiet about her great exploits. Who had not defended her, even recently, in the dispute with Gershom—and it was certain that he would not appear, people were gossiping about it already—now called her a heroine, a word Fela personally hated. A heroine was not a person, but a character from stories. A heroine to do what? Help build a war memorial in Manhattan? That was a job for an architect and for construction workers, not for heroines. Not for heroes either, no matter what Gershom thought of himself. This was the big project that Yidl had not lived to see?

Times had changed quite a bit. No one had cared then, no one had cared even twenty years after, but now, all of a sudden, what had happened in Europe was very fashionable to talk about. There were movies, there were books. Everyone wanted to be associated with it. Even Tsipora’s children, weeping through their eulogies, could not stop talking about the history, the history. This rabbi, that rabbi, everyone built his own importance out of a pile of dead bodies. Who talked about Tsipora? Not a one. One of the younger rabbis, tanned and plump, spoke of reading stories in the Jewish weeklies of Tsi
pora’s husband, organizing the refugees into a government within the displaced persons camp. Yes, it had been a very big accomplishment. Yidl, for all his flaws—leaving his family in such terrible straits at his death!—knew how to draw people around him to believe.

But what was this rabbi saying, his voice rising in excitement, then falling on its own weight? He had been a little boy in that period. “But even as a child in Brooklyn, I was interested in such things.” Well, so what? He was a rabbi! They were supposed to be interested in such things! The rustle of Fela’s scarf made Pavel look at her. She had been shaking her head.

The rabbi who read newspapers as a boy was replaced by a little man who spoke like an American. But it seemed that he was born in Poland, so he said; he had come to the Bronx in the 1930s, with his parents, no less. Still, he pointed out, he had left his whole family, his cousins, his aunts, his uncles, his grandparents, his great-aunts, his great-uncles, not to mention neighbors and friends who probably were related to him too, from way back when people lost track, everyone, everyone, in Poland. Everyone dead; it had been a small town just across the German border, one of the ones, like Fela’s, where almost everyone had been killed. And, in absentia, this little man was saying, he was a victim too. Fela felt her scarf rustling again. So what, so what? They would have the opportunity to hear about all this at his own funeral. Why should they waste time over it at Tsipora’s?

It was making her hot, her anger. And because it was September, there was no air-conditioning in the chapel. It was practically a heat wave outside, and all these elderly people here. Vladka Budnik, perhaps eighty years old, how could she take it, if even Fela, some five years younger, was suffering? A fan, at least, the staff could have provided. No one thought about these things. And who was she to complain? But she needed a rest, a breath, a sip of water, something. Her hands began to shake. She stood.

“I!” cried the old man, the little rabbi, American but not American. “I am not a normal person!”

Fela hesitated a moment before Pavel’s leg, which stuck out, twisted, from the aisle; she lifted one foot and then the other, slowly, over him, balancing herself on the pew in front of her. She was in the aisle; she thought she saw a sign for an exit.

“So imagine,” continued the speaker. “Imagine what Tsipora was, with a child, a child who was murdered!” The lament hit the inside of Fela’s head, bounced against an ear. She came toward the sign, walking down the side, careful not to look into the rows of people, then squinted:
EMERGENCY EXIT
. No, no, that was wrong. It would set off an alarm. There must be something else, the door, the regular door. And yes, there was a soft red light calling exit, exit against the climbing wail of the little rabbi. Fela managed to push herself outside the door of the chapel and began shuffling along the wall, her hand skimming the molding for support, until she reached the elevator and stumbled in. It closed in on her; she felt her face break out in a sweat, a drip, mixed with face powder, falling toward her brows. When the elevator opened again, on the ground floor, she moved three steps into the carpeted lobby, felt her feet pressing heavily, her fingers turning to ice, her stomach lurching with fear, then stopping, then moving again, side to side, side to side—

She was on her knees, her torso bent forward, contorted, her hips straining to keep herself upright; someone’s hand was behind her head.

“Ma’am,” said a voice, a man’s voice. “You’re sick.”

“No, no,” she lied. “It’s fine, it’s my ankle, just.” She moved her head away, turned, shaking, still on her knees, to look at him. A heavyset man, brown face, perhaps Puerto Rican, older, gray hair curling out of his ears. Uniform. A security guard.

“Do you have family here? Somebody I can get for you?”

“No, my husband, but no, he will be disturbed, and it’s nothing.”
She felt the carpet burning through her panty hose; she had landed on the soft part of her leg, just below the joint. Lucky. There was pain, but the pain of a bruise; nothing was broken. And her heart was beating fast, but normally; that, at least, was something.

“You don’t look too good.” He had helped her up; she was grasping at his jacket sleeve for steadiness. Her feet were solid; she could feel the floor. But at her hips there was still the strain, the weight of the upper body resting on her thin bones. “I’ll just call up and ask them to bring him down.”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” said Fela, quickly, “but no. It’s my ankle, always it bothers me, and also, it was hot. Air, just, I needed.” The guard led her to a bench outside. “Look,” she continued, sitting down carefully, navy skirt smoothed under her. “See? It’s better.” Her heart was light, floating. She rested her back against the granite wall of the funeral home.

He peered at her a moment. “There’s water inside. Would you like some?”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” she said. “Yes, thank you, sir,” she repeated when he returned, blue plastic cup in his hand. “It’s much better now. Thank you.”

She sipped and stared at the exercise club across the street, young people in bright pants moving their thighs on stair machines, tread-mills, stationary bicycles. So busy, the club, in the middle of a work-day. Strange. All watching a show on the television that hung above them. Commercials, mostly, she would guess, though she couldn’t see at that distance. Well, something to entertain. Everyone needed it. She tried to concentrate on the colors in the window.

“Difficult service, was it?” murmured the guard.

“Oh?” said Fela. “Oh, yes. I mean, not so much. But maybe a little long.”

“I knew it would be long when I saw them starting so early,” said the guard. “Usually they give it another half hour, even an hour or so
before starting. It can be difficult, especially when—was she a good friend of yours?”

“A good friend?” Fela was startled by the question, the word
good
. “Yes, well—” She paused, then whispered, “The best. The best.”

“Yes, that’s very tiring. A friend that passes away, especially at our age—it’s like family, better than that sometimes.”

He looked to be at least a decade younger than her, but the mistake flattered her. “Yes,” said Fela. “I have to agree.”

“And when a lot of different people speak about it, it can do more harm to the mourners than good, if you ask me. Sometimes you have your own memories of the person, ones you don’t want to have mixed up with those of the others.”

“You know,” said Fela. “I have to agree with this also.”

F
ELA WAS FEELING SOMEWHAT
better by the time the congregants filed outside. Still, she was glad for the extra moments to sit, waiting, the burn in her knees subsiding, while they all said their good-byes before stepping into the limousines for the cemetery. Pavel found her first.

What happened? he said. A reproach: she had left him.

Nothing, nothing, I just couldn’t stand it, she said, under her breath. He looked at her, suddenly suspicious, worried. All right now to be concerned! He would be in a bad situation if she died first, wouldn’t he? But she pushed a weak smile: It’s all right, Pavel, I’m fine.

Some of her friends stopped by to talk to her. What was she doing here? Was she all right? Of course she was, of course she was. Just a little hot inside, that was all. She leaned her neck upward to kiss Tsipora’s tearful grandchildren while her husband talked to the men. No less than six rabbis had spoken.
Six
. And what did they say, after all? She was surprised Pavel had sat through the whole thing, barely fidgeting. For rabbis he sat still, no matter how stupid.

She saw Fishl pausing at the limousines. Should he take his Oldsmobile out of the garage and follow the coffin to New Jersey, or jump into the limousines with one or another important personage? He was shifting from one foot to the other, deciding.

Pavel was more sure. He wanted to drive with Fishl, in the front. Fela watched her husband debating with his friend. She didn’t care, though she thought she would prefer the limousine. From the bench she watched the Budniks step into one.

Fela! called Vladka Budnik, her peach-colored hair stiff as a balloon. Fela! Take Pavel and come with us! It’s more comfortable, it’s more cool!

Pavel wants to go with Fishl! answered Fela.

Let him! grumbled Vladka’s husband.

Yes, let him, concurred Vladka. Just come with us yourself!

Fela shook her head. What if he doesn’t feel good?

But Pavel looked good, arguing vigorously, coughing once or twice. Vladka shut the limousine door. Pavel looked over at Fela, motioning with his chin. He thought she could read his mind, that’s what. Well, she could. But for once, she did not have to let him know. Let him ask her what she wanted to do. Let him acknowledge what was what. She had fainted, almost! A wife should be respected too.

Not that she had so much trouble from him. She was lucky, she really was. Vladka for years had complained about her husband, how stingy he was with her, how he expressed rage over the grocery bills and counted out change for her clothing. Once Vladka had even asked Pavel for money! Pavel was a generous man, thank God. No arguments on that front. Never. By now, after the disaster with the business and after his heart attack, it was Fela running the finances, as he could no longer concentrate at all, and his impatience got the better of him when he tried to decipher a bill. Fela knew how to do with the bills, and if Pavel felt put out, pushed aside, he did not complain too much, because, after all, what if she stopped?

A tall girl, long hair, came over to her bench. Tsipora’s oldest granddaughter, her eyes small from crying.

“Oh, Fela,” she said. “You’re not coming to the cemetery?”

“Of course I am, sweetheart,
neshumele
, of course I am!” Fela was surprised. “I was just sitting, waiting, you know, for Pavel to arrange our ride.”

“Why don’t you come with us? We have room for the two of you. It’s just my mother and sister.”

Fela looked over at Pavel, pacing with Fishl. Why couldn’t she go alone? He could drive as he wanted, and she could go in comfort. Why not?

“Sweetheart, have you checked with your mother? Maybe she doesn’t want someone outside the family.”

“She sent me over. You’re not outside.”

“Well,” said Fela, neck straightening. “Well, maybe I will.” She pushed herself up with her hand on the wall of the building, leaned on the granddaughter’s arm. “Pavel!” she called. “Pavel! I go with Stacy! Okay?”

“What?” Pavel turned too quickly, wobbling on his good leg. He began calling something in Yiddish. But Fela wouldn’t hear it.

“I see you there!” She moved her legs toward the limousine that held the family, then twisted her neck around, seeing Pavel unmoving, stunned. In a moment he would start to fume. Fela would pay later, with his silences and stomping. But at this moment he looked lonely, standing with no one while Fishl shuffled across the street to the garage and the cars began their journey across the river to New Jersey.

Sad, thought Fela. But he wouldn’t be left here, forsaken while everyone traveled to the burial. He would arrive; they would be there together. He was her partner, at least for this life. They wouldn’t abandon each other for long.

They couldn’t. She waved. Pavel waved back. She waved again. Then—and why not?—she blew him a kiss.

October 2000

P
AVEL AND
F
ELA ARRIVED
home from the unveiling in time for their Sunday family meal. Larry had driven them in the rain to the ceremony at the new gravestone, the gravestone belonging to Henry Budnik, who, just before his death the year before at the age of eighty-three, had made Pavel promise to watch over the stonecutting. Budnik’s wife had died just before him, and he didn’t trust his children.

Pavel was forced to lean halfway on his wife and halfway on Larry, who helped him—a little too rough, Pavel thought—move his stiff leg out of the car. But once at the door of the apartment, Pavel pulled himself away. He could walk easier inside.

Helen was there already, waiting for them in the kitchen. She was alone, and she had brought rye bread, and a bit of smoked fish, and bagels for Larry, and dietetic cookies for Fela, who had developed high sugar. Everything was prepared.

Helen was sipping coffee at the table, reading the paper. “Hi, guys,” she said.

“Oh, Helen,” said Pavel. He grabbed her around the shoulders, pressed her head to his. “But where is my littlest
yingele
?”

“Jonathan took him to a birthday party. His first one! And Nathan is at a playdate.”

“So thank God you are here. At least you are here.” He pressed his arms around her shoulders again.

“Dad,” said Helen. “Don’t be so shocked. Wasn’t I here on Thursday?” Fela pushed out a big sigh, but Pavel didn’t care. He was lucky to be able to see his daughter, that was what. He was lucky to have his family together, all in one place.

“All in one place,” he announced. “See how good it is?” He looked at Larry significantly, but Larry had turned, on his way to put the umbrellas in the bathtub to dry.

“Is everything all right?” Helen looked at Fela.

“He didn’t sleep last night.” Fela sighed. “And because he didn’t, I didn’t. I heard him from the next room!” Pavel could see her eyeing the white table, making sure there were no smudges from Helen’s newspaper. “Maybe I get a sponge,” said Fela.

“Ma,” said Larry, coming back in, “sit. Just sit. Sit.”

“Why didn’t you sleep, Dad?”

“He had a nightmare,” said Fela, to Larry and to Helen. “He was mumbling, moaning.”

“Not a nightmare,” muttered Pavel. “A bad dream.” He gave his wife a glare. Why should the children worry? He had dreamed about the gravestone for Budnik, and then about the gravestone for his own mother, which wasn’t in the right place at all. It bothered him, the place of the gravestone for his mother. He rubbed his lips with a cube of sugar; he didn’t like it mixed with his coffee.

“It was my mother,” said Pavel. In the dream, the gravestone of his mother was in the wrong place. But how could it be? They had
made sure, Pavel and his cousin Mayer, and with Larry as a witness, that the thing was in the right place. There had been a map and there had been a guide when they went back to Poland, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, to visit the graveyard where Pavel’s mother had been buried several years before the start of the war. She had died in childbirth for their youngest brother, a premature death but a normal death, a death that had come with a funeral, and prayers, and a stone to be unveiled a year after the burial.

“It was my mother,” Pavel repeated, but how could he explain? He couldn’t, not to his son, who had observed the restoration of the gravestone with his doctor’s detachment, and not to his wife, that was too painful for both of them, and not even to his daughter, who usually knew how to listen. She understood, Pavel thought, what he was saying—he believed that she did—though sometimes he doubted even this. She never said too much, just asked a question or two. But could she understand? No one could. And part of him did not want her to understand. They had made a pact, Fela and he, when the children were born, not to let them be affected by the whole thing, all the suffering, and possibly they had done a satisfactory job of it! One had to be careful with one’s children, not to let it affect them. But it was true, Pavel was lonely sometimes to talk.

“Was it the gravestone?” Helen asked. “Because, you know, I read an article. Those maps they use in the old graveyards are restored from the originals. They’re very accurate.”

How did she know what worried him? Had he mentioned it before? But surely this was the first time he had dreamed it. Wasn’t it? Perhaps not. She tried to reassure him, his daughter, in the same way he always had tried with her: by lying. An article here, a television report there. But it was real, his fear.

“No, no,” said Pavel, unable to hide the swell of hurt in his voice. “It was my mother. It wasn’t the stone, it was the graveyard itself.”

Fela gave a big sigh, again.

“What?” said Pavel. “What did I do?”

“Larry saw the graveyard himself,” said Fela. “Tell him, Larry. Wasn’t everything right?”

“It was hard to tell,” Larry said, his eyes focused on the chair straight between Pavel and Fela.

“Aha,” said Pavel, looking pointedly at his wife. Even his son agreed with him, and that was so rare an occurrence that Fela would have to take notice.

But Larry continued. “It was hard to tell, Dad. It really was. But remember? The men gave us a map. They showed it to us. They researched it very carefully. They wouldn’t want to make anything up. It’s their graveyard too.”

Pavel said nothing.

“It was a beautiful stone,” Larry went on. “The new one, I mean. The one you got. Now it’s easy to find.” His son spoke quickly, a rush, always in a rush. But it was true, the stone was beautiful. Plain and perfectly rounded and white. It had stood out from the others in the graveyard, crushed gray stones bent onto one another, stones that had been vandalized by the Germans and the Poles. The remnants of Pavel’s mother’s stone were still there. Others had been taken recently by the Krakow heritage society to make a memorial wall. Pavel hadn’t liked that. A friend of Pavel’s came from a town where soon after the invasion the Jews had been forced to remove the stones from the cemetery with their own hands, then pave them into the road to be stepped on by soldiers and towns people. Was it so different, fifty years later, to make a broken graveyard into a wall for the memory of it? Of course it was different. Memorials were important. But still, the wall had made Pavel’s stomach shrink and fold over when he saw it. He was glad his mother’s original stone, even in its broken and dilapidated condition, had remained on the earth behind the abandoned synagogue. A synagogue that was now a museum, for people to look, not to gather or pray. Not a real synagogue any longer, but still a real graveyard. A graveyard of graves.

The placement of the new stone bothered him more every year.
At the time of the redesign of the stone, Pavel had worried a small bit about the stone’s location. He wasn’t too familiar with the graveyard; Mother had died visiting relatives in Krakow, some hours away from home, and had had to be buried near her death place, so as not to lose time. It would have been risky, taking the body back to Katowice. They might have gone over the limit of one day’s lapse between death and funeral. But if his father had tried hard enough, couldn’t it have been done? Perhaps not with a newborn child to handle. Still, it was a source of resentment, terrible resentment, all the years that Pavel grew up. Why did his mother’s grave have to be so difficult to visit?

“Pavel,” said Fela. “Do you want the milk?”

“No,” said Pavel.

“Then pass it to me.” He moved his arm toward the carton. Larry took the milk from him, shook it, poured for himself before passing to Fela. Ladies first, ladies first, Pavel wanted to say, but he stopped himself. It would upset Fela. Well, Larry tried. And he was smart, after all. Maybe not the most dutiful son in the world, maybe not the most respectful, but he was smart, and he could observe and remember what his father and Mayer had been doing. He wouldn’t know what was right or not, not for graveyards, but his presence, strangely, had given the task a certain legitimacy. Pavel had been glad that Larry had gone with them. It was Larry’s vacation, and instead of Florida or California or someplace that young people liked to go, he had gone with his father and uncle to Poland, in November. It was good when Larry tried.

“You were a witness,” Pavel said to his son. “We tried very hard to make sure it was all set in order, her new stone where the old stone would have been. I think we did it right, didn’t we?”

“I’m sure you did,” said Larry. “Positive.”

Pavel looked at the calm smile on his son’s face. His son, a grown man, who took care of others, who saw pain and sickness every day, but who still remained naive, innocent. A wind rose in Pavel’s chest.
“Then why do I feel this worry?” he suddenly cried, hand slamming the table. Larry’s cup rattled against the plate.

“Pavel,” said Fela, face softened. “Pavel.”

Helen’s hand had flown over his, had stopped it from jumping up again. “Dad,” she said. “Dad, it’s fine. It’s a normal thing to worry about. But it’s in the right place. You saw, Mayer saw, the graveyard men saw, Larry saw. How could all of you be wrong?”

“The dream was terrible,” said Pavel, shaking his head, quieter now. Helen had spooned a serving of herring onto his plate; she never remembered he did not like the cream. But he did not want to waste. He picked up a piece of fish with his fork, brought it to his mouth, then put it down again without eating it. His throat was beginning to hurt from all the speaking, and when he got nervous, excited, it hurt worse. But the words were fighting him to get out. “The stone, the new stone,” he rasped. “It was in the wrong place. It was standing in the plot of a complete stranger, a stranger who wanted his own gravestone. He wanted it the same way. He wanted it restored and returned.”

Pavel’s children listened to him, Larry’s face blank, Helen’s attentive. Pavel turned from one to the other, then looked straight at Fela. “He was screaming, in pain! With no air to breathe, because our new stone was blocking him. And my mother, all I could hear was her voice, lost somewhere else in the cemetery, looking for us.”

Pavel took in a breath, pushed the breath out.

“Really?” said Fela, swallowing a corner of her bread. “The way I heard you in the middle of the night, your mother was calling out to you, saying that you too much focus on her gravestone in the first place.” She squinted her eyes. “There’s only so much one person can do, Pavel. If she’s upset, probably it’s because she’s stuck still in Poland. Most Jews prefer hell.”

P
AVEL RINSED HIS MOUTH
with mouthwash, patted his lips with a small white towel. It was after nine o’clock, and no one was home. The children had taken their mother to a movie; Pavel hadn’t wanted to go. No attention for it, no patience. But now he wondered what kept them so late. They had left at seven. How long was a movie? They could stop afterward for coffee, but why, with him waiting alone?

It was hot, and Pavel hated the air-conditioning that Fela had insisted on using when they still shared the bed, before she took over the old room of their son. If he turned on the air, he would be cold; but now he was warm, sweating. He went to the chest of drawers under his night table and opened the bottom drawer. He had short-sleeved pajamas and long-sleeved pajamas, everything in different shades of blue, except for the newer plaid ones, in red and black, that Fela had bought him two years ago from the Gap. They were the only American kind he liked. He looked at the short sleeves of his pale cotton pajamas, the shorts that folded under them. He took them out, laid them flat on the bed, fingered the white piping that slanted into a V at the collar.

He had not worn summer pajamas since the bypass operation. Ashamed of the new scars on his leg. Stupid. Who looked at an old man’s legs? And anyway, he had worn shorts in the summertime, even outside, with the injuries on his right leg, the injuries from the accident, visible for all the world to see, when he was young. But these, the surgery scars, where they had cut open and taken out the veins to attach to his heart, these marked up the good leg. And they came not from accidents, not from outside force, but from sickness and age. All his life he had been a strong man, not big but strong, tough. Nothing could break him. Everyone said so, all his friends. And now, this sickness, this smoke-covered heart, had broken him. He was ashamed, and he could feel his friends’ shame for him.

Fela thought this crazy. They’re sick too! she would say to him, impatient. We go to a funeral every month! I’m not so healthy either!
Do you see me blaming myself? We’re old, Pavel, we’re old. Then she would laugh at him, touch his arm.

He would shake her off. In good moments he could laugh at his vanity, but he didn’t think it so funny when she said it aloud, only when he thought it himself in his head. He was old. He never thought he would become so old. When he was twenty-five, starving, the idea that he would live to thirty seemed stupid and sentimental, a dark joke. But once he was liberated, he became invincible. Pavel had lived past the deaths of most of his best friends, and he had lived past the deaths of all his worst enemies. He had gone to the funeral of his brother-in-law, the man who had betrayed him for money, and he had cared for the cousin whose dead husband had helped him come finally to America. He had suffered through his son’s divorce, and he had woken up one night three years before to the telephone call with the news that his daughter had given birth to a second son. He had lived a long time.

He never thought he would become so old, not so much in numbers as in energy. It wasn’t just broken limbs and empty flesh that slowed Pavel now. It was his own soul betraying him, loosening the bones from the inside, shrinking him so he almost was smaller than his daughter. His children shouted at him sometimes; they thought he didn’t hear well. When he looked at bills he had to cover the right eye, because it clouded over and distracted him. There was a thick white surgery line that drove down his chest, splitting it in two. His cardiologist gave him pills not just for his hardened arteries and erratic blood pressure but also for his feelings, to make him less depressed, to help him get up in the morning. Pills for his mind, another bottle in the collection of bottles he brought to each meal.