Mitla Pass (36 page)

Sore from sitting in one position, Moses emerged from the shop and trudged through the house, a martinet with his prayer book held before him in one hand and his other hand behind his back. Through the kitchen, he climbed the rear stairs, through each bedroom, glancing out of the corner of his eye to see that everyone was accounted for. He returned to the kitchen, where Hannah sat listlessly fanning herself.

“Where is Saul?” he demanded.

“Maybe he broke his chains and escaped. How should I know?”

“He’s not here!”

His voice drew the other children into the kitchen, fearful as they entered.

“Where is he? Lazar, you are covering up for him.”‘

Lazar shook his head.

“I will not tolerate the Sabbath to be desecrated under my roof!” He seized his cane from the coatrack and held it up like a bat, threateningly. “Saul will get the lesson of his life!”

Hannah came from her chair, slowly, wiping the perspiration from her face and neck. “You, Moses Balaban, desecrate the Sabbath every day of your life with your vile, rotten ways. You will not put a finger on that boy.”

“Momma, please,” Lazar said.

“Not a finger,” she repeated.

Moses’ eyes widened with shock at this sudden defiance. He made a gesture of anger toward her, which brought the girls around her to form a protective cordon. Then Lazar stepped between his father and Hannah. Moses shook the stick at them. Lazar jerked it from his hand and threw it into a corner.

“Go back to your praying,” Hannah said. “You look like a mad dog. And what is more, this is the last Sabbath you lock us in like caged animals. There is nothing that says we cannot walk in the streets and the children cannot take a swim in the river.”

Moses grasped his chest and staggered to a chair and slumped into it, glaring wildly at nothing. The sweat dripped off his beard and his black Sabbath coat became sticky with it.

A pounding at the shop door stabbed into the scene.

“Tell them to go away,” Moses grunted. “It’s the Sabbath.”

The knocking persisted until Leah ran from the kitchen. In a moment she returned, screaming incoherently. Hannah knew at once when she saw them. The mayor, the chief of police, and a number of others stood before them and took off their hats.

“Saul!” she cried.

“It was an accident, Mrs. Balaban.”

T
HE WHOLE TRUTH
was never known, only suspected. A bunch of boys got up a baseball team and hopped a freight train to go over to the Eastern Shore for a pickup game. Saul, always the daredevil, climbed on top of the car. They said he fell. The family never ceased to believe he was pushed. His body dropped between two cars and was dragged over the tracks for over a mile before it shook loose.

Hannah Balaban’s hair turned white overnight. A few days later, she left Havre de Grace with her daughters. She had known of Moses’ secret hiding place for years and she departed with his money.

Moses went berserk when he found it missing and turned on Lazar. But Lazar was too big and too strong. Lazar also left for Baltimore, where he joined his sisters and his stepmother.

Moses remained. This time he had a new companion: a hideous nightmare of death and disfiguration that was to recur for the rest of his life.

BALTIMORE

1902–1913

“S
O, THANK
your lucky stars, it’s better starving here than sitting at the Queen’s table in Havre de Grace,” Hannah would say, “and we should likewise count our blessings we aren’t living in the Lower East Side of New York. Such stories a person hears.
Kinder, kinder
, we are lucky to be alive.”

Baltimore was borderline. Borderline hunger, borderline soles on the shoes. Whatever it was, it was borderline. Hannah’s sister, Sonia, and her maligned husband, Jake Rubenstein, were in a perpetual state of struggle. Sonia’s bridal shop had gone down the drain, sunk by Jake’s gambling debts.

Uncle Hyman, the one success story in the family, owned a large pharmacy on Fayette Street, near the central post office, in downtown Baltimore. Hyman gave to the relatives in Baltimore, keeping them afloat, gave to the relatives in the old country, gave to relatives in Palestine, gave to the synagogue. He never stopped giving. Such a blessed man.

Uncle Hyman took in Lazar as an apprentice pharmacist and paid his tuition to study at night school at the Maryland College of Pharmacy. Hyman’s gesture kept their heads above water.

From Moses Balaban, months would pass without so much as one thin dime of support money. Moses would meander into Baltimore on the holidays, spiffed up like the Prince of Wales, and honor his family with a visit. Once or twice a year he’d give each of the girls a new silver dollar. Otherwise, no wife, no support.

Hannah had to be beyond merely industrious. By day she sold a line of ladies’ foundation garments on a door-to-door basis: corsets and bust bodices. She would pick up an occasional order for a wedding gown, always, it seemed, just in the nick of time to stave off a disaster, or to spare her from the humiliation of having to go to Uncle Hyman for money.

The girls ran the household. In the evenings, they helped Momma, enabling her to take in more alteration work. Hannah’s foot was always at the treadle of the sewing machine until far into the night.

So they managed ... barely.

After five years in Baltimore, Hannah was able to open a tiny shop on Gay Street, between the deli and a house no one talked about, except in whispers. It was an open secret what went on in “that” house, with its constant parade of men, particularly on payday. Her daughters, by the ages of eight, ten, and twelve, became deft at cutting patterns and even doing hand-beaded work.

After a year of apprenticing, studying, and cramming, Lazar became a certified pharmacist and things opened up a bit. They were able to move into a relatively decent apartment on the second floor above a bakery, where at least they always had that pleasant aroma drifting up. The baker, one of many charmed by Hannah, always gave her first crack at the day-old bread and cakes counter.

Lazar was a nice sort of fellow, not too bad-looking and quick with the smile and a joke. Someday, Hyman assured, he’d have a pharmacy of his own. Lazar had gone from boyhood to manhood unselfishly. In return for Hannah’s early love and protection, he became entirely devoted to her needs and those of his sisters.

One would expect that Hannah and the girls would have held Lazar in special esteem for his sacrifices. After all, when he received his certification, he was earning enough to go out and live on his own and enjoy the fruits of bachelorhood. But Lazar remained in a cauldron of angry women. He was taken for granted, a semi-person within their walls. Lazar was Lazar ... an all-right boy ... an observant Jew ... an altogether decent provider.

And with the passage of time the memory of the dead Saul expanded out of reality. They forgot how wild Saul had been, how irresponsible, how difficult to handle. How he had probably instigated his own death. Saul was remembered as the family defender, a sainted boy. Saul was credited like an Irish patriot for deeds he never did and songs he never sang. The
yahrzeit
of his death was observed with no less solemnity than Yom Kippur. Lazar lived beneath the shadow of his revered dead brother.

To be sure, Lazar was well served. He sat at the head of the table and his clothing was always spotless and mended. He had his own room, priority on the bathroom, first look at the newspaper. Yet, when Leah or Fanny or Pearl starched his dickey, or laundered his underwear, or when his shaving mug fought for space among their cosmetics, or when he smelled of bay rum, the iota of resentment was always there. After all, he was a man. A
living
man ...

There was a strange counterpoint to this. When Lazar brought a girlfriend home or appeared to be more than casually interested, his mother and sisters suddenly elevated him onto a pedestal. No girl was good enough for “their” Lazar. Girlfriends were made to feel patently uncomfortable. The inference was always that they must be tramps. On the one occasion when the engagement was about to be officially announced to Zelda Meyers, the butcher’s daughter, Hannah was stricken with a mysterious illness. Fainting spells, shooting pains, and insomnia led a parade of symptoms which miraculously disappeared when Lazar and Zelda broke up. After a time, Lazar stopped bringing girlfriends home. By his mid-twenties he seemed headed toward lifelong bachelorhood.

“Never mind, Lazar,” Hannah would say, “if you like the girl, you have my blessings ... go. And don’t worry about us, we’ll survive. Maybe you should first check a few things about her health. Some stories, probably idle gossip when she was younger ... actually, who knows her real age ... some certain disease ...I wouldn’t mention. Just be careful. You know what I mean. You’re a druggist. You know what the little drawer near the register has in it. Just be careful.”

So, Lazar hung out with the other bachelors, a little card game, a cinema, a lot of talk about poon, and all that manly stuff. Lazar’s sole passion remained basketball, at which he was a wizard from childhood. He was star guard for the team of the Council of Young Men’s Hebrew and Kindred Associations, the much respected CYMAKS, into which he channeled his excess energy.

W
ITH THE THREE
Balaban sisters, the situation was amazingly similar, but slightly different. Hannah and her girls retained a tight little island for themselves in the riotous confines of poor Jewish Baltimore, a ghetto centered on a pair of aged synagogues on Lloyd Street.

Leah was not only the oldest, but the cleverest and best-looking. By her mid-teens she had grown taller than her mother and alluringly buxom and was crowned with a head of marcelled hair that flowed down to the middle of her back. She was the first to go out and skirmish in the world of young men. Her immense brown eyes knew how to flash out the signal that brought instant palpitations to the recipient.

Leah was both vain and passionate. She enjoyed the flirtations and became adept in the use of charm, allure, and manipulation. But the foundation for womanhood was shaky. The voice of her mother seemed to be always whispering in her ear. Womanhood was a place filled with traps and pitfalls. Beware.

Leah’s suitors and, later, Fanny’s and Pearl’s were all poor boys with uncertain futures. After the initial kisses and embraces, the boys usually sensed something forbidding about the Balaban sisters.

The little flat above the bakery was a lively place. The kitchen also served as the living room, and Fanny played a secondhand upright piano well enough to convey the sentiments of the day, even though it was badly out of tune. The songs were about twilight and gloaming and strawberry blondes and men on flying trapezes and birds in gilded cages. The kitchen table was filled with baked goodies and lively discussions abounded about the organizing of the garment workers, or socialism, or news of the old country.

Beneath the gaiety, a sensitive man soon detected that Hannah and her daughters carried deep, hidden anger against the father, who was never mentioned, whose photograph was missing from the mantel. Disdain for males was never spoken of, or even admitted to directly, but many young men sensed it and never returned.

1914

H
ANNAH GOT UP
from her sewing corner when Leah came home from work and, as she did each day, poured two glasses of tea from the always steaming kettle. It was 1914 and Europe was at war again, this time totally, from Russia to the Atlantic Ocean, from Africa to the Baltic Sea.

Leah had turned nineteen and was an operator in a small neighborhood beauty parlor. She was a chronic complainer, who seemed to be continually plagued by some exotic, unexplainable distress. Working on her feet all day was a perpetual curse. She mumbled to herself that she should go to secretarial school as her mother unhooked her shoes and massaged her feet.

“Where are Fanny and Pearl?”

“With boys, down at the penny arcade, where else?”

Lazar came in a few moments later, bussed his mother and sister dutifully, gave Hannah his pay envelope, and retired to the bathroom with a newspaper.

The women sipped. Leah knew immediately that her mother had that
shiddach
expression on her face. It was a subject Leah really hated to get into. She sighed and awaited the bad news.

“I have been spoken to,” Hannah started, “about a match.”

“No matches, Momma,” Leah responded quickly. “You yourself have said a thousand times that this is America and we will make up our own minds.”

“I know, darling, but this has some unique aspects.”

“The lord mayor’s son, or some German millionaire from uptown?” Leah mocked.

“I only want that my daughters should avoid a catastrophe such as befell me.”

“So, who’s the lucky suitor?”

“For one minute, listen to Momma. I am trying, with all my heart and soul, to steer you into a comfortable situation. First, I want that you shouldn’t have to starve and scrape for every penny. I want for you a man of some little means, who can provide for you a nice home. And a man who, God forbid, is not a stingy dog like your father.” Upon mention of Moses, Hannah made as if to spit on the floor. “Dowries are becoming a thing of the past. Here, in America, there is not only a freedom of choice, but there are also more eligible men than women to marry them. Here a man will even pay a pretty penny for a suitable wife.”

“That’s what you thought when you married Poppa.”

“Believe me, Leah, I would not, for a single minute, consider a man who was not a kind and gentle person. ... Do you think I would talk
shiddach
with someone as disgusting as Moses Balaban?” Again she made a spitting gesture.

“Not only a kind and gentle man,” Hannah said, “but someone who is not out to conquer the world. These Socialists, these Communists, these street-corner agitators, I tell you, go home and make their wives and children miserable. What a woman needs, all things considered, is a nice, quiet, weak man, who can be controlled by his wife.”