In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (10 page)

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Hotels and the Holocaust

Reuben Wallenrod

I
n the evening the casino becomes the center of Leo Halper’s hotel in Brookville. The band plays, the young people dance, and the joyous sounds fill the grounds and the road. The casino hall is flooded with light and men and women seek one another, draw close to one another. The drum beats out the rhythm definitely, urgently; the violin doubts and prays, the saxophone sounds pour forth with vehemence and joy; and the piano sounds run beside them like little animals down the hill…. Men and women dance, separate for a short while and come close again; men and women are dancing in narrow circles: you and I; he and she; let us rush down together; what else is there besides our narrow circles? All these two or three hundred people, men and women dancing in one of the casinos in the Catskill mountains, these two or three hundred lives are nothing but little narrow circles, dancing their own dance, desiring only their own little desires, living their own little lives.

The heart knows well that there is another great wide, threatening world outside you, but you are afraid to stop your dancing and think of that world. Such knowledge may well break up the charm of the circle, it may well break up your very being, all of you. Outside there are lakes and woods and the moon is pouring soft light on the frightful distances, but your heart is afraid to look at all that.

Tomorrow you will go out of your circle and buy your newspaper, and you will read in it before eating your roast chicken about one hundred Jews that have died a frightful death. You will read about thirty girls who have been thrown into whorehouses, about towns full of memories that have been erased and are no more. If you let this news enter you, become a part of you, you will become insane. You will be no more, you will become one of them. Don’t! For your own sake. Don’t! Don’t go out of your little circle. While in New York you keep away those terrible sounds and visions. You keep them away with the sounds of your machines, of your typewriters, with your bargaining, your laughter, your quarrelling. Now you have escaped to the Catskill mountains, try to keep those sounds away, through your rush for enjoyment, an excited nervous enjoyment. Close yourself up in your narrow circle, listen to the sounds of the band, to the sounds of the dancing people. Let all those terrible sounds and visions become just numbers; let the one hundred, the thirty become a mere statistical, visionless number, and you will not see the contorted faces of your tortured brethren, of the women dragged into whorehouses, of their strangled children.

They come, however, those people and stand before you. You see among them men and women you actually knew. You have known them with your eyes and you have known them in your imagination. And then they come separately, and distinctly, and at times they rush towards you as one terrible face, a frightened face.

Chase away all these visions and repeat to yourself that hundreds, that
thousands
of men and women were killed and are dead. Numbers will dispel your fear. Death also dispels fear.

The finality of death and the indifference of numbers will relieve you. Your calculation will reassure you and cheer you. The calculation is simple: so many Nazis in the world, so many people who are against the Nazis, and of course, “those bastards, those gangsters will be exterminated.” Even your curses reassure you somewhat. That is, you feel now that you have done your part, you have cursed them. And now you may again return to your circle and follow the music. Again you hear the wild pommeling of the big drum and little drums, the triumphant tones and sudden passionate impatient ecstasy of the saxophone, the heavy self-satisfaction of the bass, and the little rushing broken sounds of the piano. But you can’t run away. The visions and sounds blended into one terrible contorted face will beckon to you and admonish you.

The youngsters dance their new steps like young heifers with joyous jumping and animal enthusiasm, but fear is creeping into the hearts of their elders.

Leo Halper stands near the entrance to the casino. He comes from time to time to check up on the cleanliness of the hall, on the playing of the band, and to show the guests and the musicians that there is an eye that sees them. Besides, it is also necessary to keep an eye from time to time on the conduct of the various men and women who come to the hotel. Not that he wants to be a watch dog for their morals. He knows that people come to have a good time in the Catskills, otherwise they would not come here. Still, let them know that Halper sees. He knows what is going on in other hotels, and he will not allow that in Brookville. Not while he is here.

And while he is standing and watching, various thoughts come crowding each other. Here they are, Jewish boys and girls, dancing and enjoying themselves. And he is angry at his previous anger and resentment at them. Aren’t the youngsters entitled to a little happiness? Are there many places left in the world where a Jewish boy and girl could have a bit of joy? Let them dance! Who knows what the morrow will bring?

Halper stands at the entrance to his casino and mumbles within himself: “Dance, youngsters, dance,” but he knows that someone within him is protesting, and a sharp pain is awakened. It seems that every passing moment is strained and tense like those strings of the violin, that another moment and it may tear apart, and then all these boys and girls will suddenly stop their dancing, and their faces will blend in that terrible face of those that are far away.

Halper leaves the entrance to his casino and the sounds follow him into the summer night.

The Catskills at the End of World War II

Martin Boris

D
ouglas soaked, scrubbed, then polished the glasses until they shone brilliantly when stacked against the ceiling-to-floor window. The clear glasses caught the sun. He smiled at the sparkle and shine.

Andy had come in before him. In his favorite spot opposite the register, at his favorite angle, hovering over a cup of coffee the way Douglas was told he did over bourbon and soda at the Red Cat in Monticello before the war. A sip, a look out the window, up the street toward the bank and down where the sidewalk ended at the City Hall, then a puzzled stare into the cup, as if searching for something he might have dropped. Followed by the ritual of smoking. First a fresh pack of Luckies, square and white, with a red circle in the center. He tore a thin ribbon of cellophane around the top, ripped the corner off the roof, then coaxed out a cigarette by hammering the pack against his hand. He removed the cylinder, and tapped the loose cuts of tobacco into place against the tabletop. Next the magic of transferring the dormant fire in the match to a smoldering in the cigarette tip. He inhaled deeply while the smoke infused his blood, his lungs, his brain, then exhaled through funneled lips. Douglas wondered how much of a man’s life was surrendered to the near-religious act of lighting a cigarette, start to finish, without even assessing the years stolen because of the poisons it contained. If George Seldes’s newsletter
In Fact
were fact about the link between smoking and cancer.

Douglas remembered that the pre–Pearl Harbor Andy was a study in restless energy failing to be confined within the boundaries of a chicken farm. Despite a mother and a father to whom work was a religion Andy had spent endless hours foraging the countryside for attractive, easy women. Douglas admired that wild free look in Andy’s eyes, that Lord Byron look, as he sped by in his Ford pickup truck going to or coming from some fabulous adventure. Andy was small and stringy, with a curly head a little too large for his bantam-rooster body. When he stood straight his legs bowed as if bent by the weight of that oversized head.

Harry, never one to judge a man out in the open, said to Douglas at the time that he thought Andy had gone over the edge with Jed Parker’s wife. Amelia Dooley, twenty-one, had married Jed, twice her age. Fear was the matchmaker. She wasn’t pretty, she had no prospects and Jed worried himself into an ulcer about leaving the farm to the county, there being no more Parkers left. After a week of courtship he had married Amelia. During the next five childless years they had increasingly little to say to each other. Then one day Amelia moved into Monticello, leaving Jed a short businesslike note devoid of feeling or recrimination. She took a job in Warren Senstacker’s hardware store where Andy found her, ripe for picking. Some said she knew Andy before that, but Harry wasn’t sure.

Douglas heard that Andy and Amelia entertained each other at her place, sometimes until four in the morning. Since no law was broken, neighbors in town could only express concern and indignation. Another time that would have been enough to send her scurrying back to the farm, but small-town censure had lost its bite by then and they were merely a gossip item for three months. Then Amelia upped and moved east someplace. Harry liked Jed Parker and blamed Andy for not returning her to the farm when the flame died.

Andy finally stirred his coffee. Without lifting his head he knew that he was being observed, scrutinized, judged by Douglas. The Strong kid with his distant yet worshipful eyes was waiting for him to do something spectacular. Andy felt the burden of being someone’s idol. War had taught him that there were no idols, both captains and corporals had run like hell when the shrapnel exploded. He had once seen a major general vomit all over himself after a particularly bloody battle. He’d like to tell that to Douglas and sink his obvious case of hero worship. Dumb kid.

Andy looked at Douglas, who was freshening up the chicken salad with mayonnaise. He suddenly felt the need to say something to the boy.

“Do you remember how my grandfather used to walk, Douglas? Those short baby steps? As if each one was a small miracle?”

Douglas nodded.

“You know, sometimes a week goes by and it’s like he never was, then sometimes he’s so real that I could swear he’s in the next room.”

There were moments, too, when Douglas’s memories of Zaida captured his present. Andy’s summoning up of the old man stirred as well the sweet heavy scent of apple blossoms. In the air-conditioned luncheonette Douglas could swear he smelled apple blossoms. It was happening all over again and he could not believe how vivid the memories were.

A warm April afternoon long ago that hinted of abundant life and growth. All the trees sprouted green tips that became, on close examination, tight little fists of leaves. Douglas remembered wondering then why the dead couldn’t also return to life every year, for a little while. His mother’s death still cut like a thin knife when he thought of it. He remembered that times were bad and they couldn’t even
give
the eggs away, then.