The Gravedigger’S Daughter (18 page)

“You
see
?”

Ah, the stubborn child! She stared, and could not reply.

Angrily Jacob dragged his heel through the gravel, destroying the most obvious of the mocking lines.

Months ago, at the time of the initial desecration, he’d exhausted himself removing the tar-markings. He’d scraped tar off the front door of the stone house in a frenzy of loathing and yet!�he had failed to remove it entirely. All he could do was repaint the damned door a somber dark green, except: a large shadowy

“Eh! You are one of
them
.”

A senseless remark, he knew even as he uttered it. But he was the father of this child, he might say anything that flew into his head and she must honor it.

His stupid, stubborn daughter unable to see what was before her eyes, at her very feet! He lost patience with her, grabbed her shoulder and shook, shook, shook her until she whimpered with pain. “One of
them
! One of
them
! Now go bawling to your ma!” He flung her from him, onto the lane, the sharp pebbly gravel, and left her there panting and swiping at her nose, staring at him with widened eyes, dilated in terror. He stalked off cursing to get a rake to erase the taunting swastikas, another time.

Dybbuks!
He had not thought of it.

He was a man of reason, of course he had not thought of such a thing. And yet.

A
dybbuk
, cunning and agile as a snake, could take over a weak-minded female. In the Munich zoo he’d seen an extraordinary eight-foot snake, a cobra, so amazingly supple, moving in what appeared to be a continuous stream, like water; the snake “running” on its numerous ribs, inside its scaly, glittering, rather beautiful skin. His eyes rolled in his head, almost he felt faint, imagining how the snake-dybbuk would enter the female.

Up between the legs, and inside.

For he could not trust either of them: wife, daughter.

As a man of reason he did not want to believe in dybbuks and yet perhaps that was the explanation. Dybbuks had come alive, out of the primeval mud of Europe. And here in Milburn. Prowling the cemetery, and the countryside beyond. Dybbuks rising like mist out of the tall damp grasses that shivered in the wind. Snakeroot, cattails. Dybbuks blown by the wind against the loose-fitting windows of the old stone house, scratching their claws against the glass, desperate to gain entry. And dybbuks seeking entry into human bodies in which the souls are loose-fitting, primitive.

Anna. His wife of twenty-three years. Could he trust Anna, in her femaleness?

Like her body, Anna’s mind had softened with time. She had never fully recovered from the third pregnancy, the anguish of that third birth. In fact she had never fully recovered from their panicked flight from Germany.

She blamed him, he felt. That he was her husband and a man, and yet not a man to protect her and their children.

Yet in the night, another Anna came alive. In her sleep, in her lustful dreams. Ah, he knew! He heard her groaning, breathing rapidly. He felt her flesh-tremors. Their bed reeked with her sweat, her female secretions. By day she turned from him, averting her eyes. As he averted his eyes from her nakedness. She had never loved him, he supposed. For hers had been a girl’s soul, shallow and easily swayed by emotion. In their circle of young people in Munich, Anna had laughed and flirted with many young men; you could see how they were attracted to her, and she had basked in their attention. Now he could acknowledge, Jacob Schwart had been but one of these. Perhaps she had loved another, who had not loved her. And there came Jacob Schwart, blinded by love. Begging her to marry him. On their wedding night he had not known to ask himself
Is my bride a virgin? Is hers a virgin-love?
The act of love had been overwhelming to Jacob, explosive, annihilating. He’d had so little experience. He had had no judgment, and would have none for years.

It was on the ocean crossing that the dybbuk-Anna had first emerged. She’d been delirious, muttering and raving and striking at him with her fists. Her eyes held no love for him, nor even recognition. Demon eyes, tawny-glowing eyes! The coarsest German profanities and obscenities had leapt from Anna’s lips, not those of an innocent young wife and mother but the words of a demon, a dybbuk.

That day he’d found Anna in the shed. Hiding there, with the little one wrapped in a dirty shawl.
Would you like me to strangle her?
Had she been serious, or taunting him?�he had not known.

Now, he could not trust Anna to prepare their meals correctly. It was her practice to boil their well water, for very likely the well water was contaminated, and yet he knew, she was careless and indifferent. And so they were being poisoned, by degrees. And he could not trust her with other men. Any man who saw Anna saw at once her femaleness, as evident as nakedness. For there was something slatternly and erotic in Anna’s soft, raddled body and slack girl’s face; her moist, brainless gaze that excited masculine desire, even as it revulsed.

The sheriff’s deputies, for instance. Since Herschel’s disappearance they came by the house from time to time, to make inquiries. Jacob wasn’t always home when they came, Anna had to answer the door and speak to them. Jacob was coming to suspect, these inquiries might be mere pretense.

Often there were men wandering in the cemetery, amid the graves. Seemingly visiting the graves. Mourners. Or assuming that role.

Anna Schwart had become devious, defiant. He knew she’d disobeyed him by daring to turn on his radio, more than once. He had never caught her, for she was too clever; yet he knew. Now the radio tubes were burnt out and would not be replaced, so no one could listen to the damned radio. There was that satisfaction, at least.

(Jacob had loosened the radio tubes himself. To thwart Anna. Then he’d forgotten he had loosened them. When he switched on the radio now, there was silence.)

And there was Rebecca, his daughter.

Her lanky body was filling out, taking on the contours of the female. Through a part-closed door he’d glimpsed her, washing her upper body with an expression of frowning concentration. The shock of the girl’s small, startlingly white breasts, the nipples small as grape seeds. Her underarms that were sprouting fine dark hairs, and her legs…He had known that he could no longer trust her, when she’d refused to acknowledge the swastika marks raked in the lane. And years before, when he’d discovered her picture in the Milburn newspaper. Spelling champion!
Rebecca Esther Schwart!
The first he’d heard of such a thing. She had kept it secret from him, and from Anna.

The girl would grow up swiftly, he knew. Once she’d begun school she had begun to turn into one of
those others
. He had seen her with the slatternly Greb girl. She would grow up, she would leave him. A man must surrender his daughter to another man unless he claims her for his own, which is forbidden.

“And so I must harden my heart against them both.”

From the proprietor of the Milburn Feed Store he would acquire secondhand a Remington twelve-gauge double-barrel shotgun, a bargain at seventy-five dollars.

Five dollars more for a near-full box of fifty shells.

For hunting, Mr
.
Schwart?

For protection of my property
.

Pheasant season isn’t till fall
.
Second week of October
.

Protection of my home
.
My family
.

It’s got a kick, a twelve-gauge
.

My wife, my daughter
.
We are alone out there
.
The sheriff will not protect us
.
We are alone in the country
.
We are U.S. citizens
.

A good gun for protection if you know how to use it
.
Remember it has a kick, Mr. Schwart
.

A kick?

In the shoulder
.
If you grip the stock too loosely when you pull the trigger. If you are not practiced. A kick like a mule
.

Jacob Schwart laughed heartily, baring nicotine-stained teeth in a happy smile.
Kick like a mule, eh? Well! I am a mule
.

“Fools! There was no one.”

Sometime in the slow dripping spring of 1949 the realization came to him. His deepest contempt wasn’t for the ignorant peasants who surrounded him but for the elderly Jews of his long-ago youth in skullcaps and prayer shawls muttering to their ridiculous god.

An extinct volcano god Yehovah.

In the night such truths came to him. He sat in the kitchen or in the doorway of the house, drinking. Exclusively now he drank hard cider from the mill down the road, that was cheap, and potent. The shotgun close by. In case of prowlers, vandals. He had no fear of the dead. A dybbuk is not dead. A dybbuk is fierce with life, insatiable. In this place where the tide of history had washed him ashore and abandoned him like trash. Yet his deepest contempt was for the bearded black-clad troll-elders of his long-ago boyhood in Munich. Cruelly he laughed seeing the sick terror in their eyes as at last they understood.

“No one, you see? God is no one, and nowhere.”

And Jacob Schwart was not a son of that tribe.

As if she’d only just thought of it, Katy Greb said, “You could stay with me, Rebecca. Sleep in my bed, there’s room.”

Always Katy spoke with the impulsiveness of one for whom there is no hesitation between a wish and its immediate expression.

Rebecca stammered she didn’t know.

“Sure! Momma won’t mind, Momma likes you real well.”

Momma likes you real well.

So touched, Rebecca couldn’t speak at first. Wasn’t watching where she was walking, stubbed her toe on a rock at the side of the Quarry Road.

Katy Greb was the only girl to whom Rebecca had said certain private things.

Katy was the only girl who knew how frightened Rebecca was of her father.

“Not what he’d do to me. But to Ma. Some night when he’s drunk.”

Katy grunted as if such a revelation, daring for Rebecca to make, was no surprise to
her
.

“My pa, he’s the same way. Except he ain’t around right now, so Ma misses him.”

The girls laughed together. You had to laugh at older people, they were so ridiculous.

Of course there was no room for Rebecca in the Grebs’ ramshackle wood-frame house. No room for a twelve-year-old girl, almost thirteen, tall for her age, awkward and brooding.

Somehow it had happened, in seventh grade, that Katy Greb was Rebecca’s closest (secret) friend. Katy was a big-boned girl with straw-hair and teeth that smelled like brackish ditch water and a face big and florid as a sunflower. Her laughter was high-pitched and contagious. Her breasts were jiggly nubs in her chest like fists bunched up inside her hand-me-down sweaters.

Katy was a year older than Rebecca, but in Rebecca’s seventh grade homeroom at the Milburn junior high. She was Rebecca’s (secret) friend because neither Rebecca’s father nor Rebecca’s mother approved of her having friends.
Those others
who could not be trusted.

Rebecca wished that Katy was her sister. Or she was Katy’s sister. Living then with the Grebs, and only just neighbors of the Schwarts who lived a half-mile away.

Katy was always saying how her momma believed that Rebecca was a “good influence” on her because Rebecca took her school studies seriously and didn’t “horse around” like the other kids.

Rebecca laughed as if she’d been tickled. It wasn’t true but she loved to hear that Mrs. Greb spoke of her in such a flattering way. It was like Leora Greb to say extravagant things based on not much evidence. “Horse around” was a common expression of hers, almost you could see young horses galloping and frolicking in a field.

The Grebs were the Schwarts’ closest neighbors on the Quarry Road. Leora Greb had five children of whom the two youngest appeared to be retarded. A seven-year-old boy still in diapers, not yet potty-trained. A six-year-old girl whimpering and jabbering in frustration at being unable to speak as others did. The Grebs’ house was partly covered in asphalt siding, close by the dump. Worse than where the Schwarts live, Rebecca thought. When the wind blew from the direction of the dump there was a sickish stink of garbage and smoldering tires in the Grebs’ house.

Katy’s father Bud Greb, whom Rebecca had never seen, was said to be away at Plattsburgh, at the Canadian border.
Incarcerated
at the men’s maximum security prison there.

In-car-cer-ated
. An unexpected dignity accrued to these syllables, when Bud Greb was spoken of.

What a surprise for Rebecca, to learn that Leora Greb wasn’t any younger than Anna Schwart! Rebecca did the calculations, both women were in their early forties. And yet, how different they were: Leora’s hair was an eye-catching blond, she wore makeup that gave her a youthful, glamorous look, her eyes were alert, laughing. Even with Mr. Greb away at Plattsburgh ( his sentence was seven-to-ten, for armed robbery) Leora was likely to be in a good mood most days.

Leora was a part-time chambermaid at the General Washington Hotel in Milburn, which called itself the “premiere” hotel in this part of the Chautauqua Valley. The General Washington was a large boxy building with a granite facade, white-shuttered windows, and a painted sign at the front meant to depict General Washington’s head, his tight-curled hair like a sheep’s and his big-jawed face, in some long-ago improbable year 1776. Leora was always bringing back from the General Washington cellophane packages of peanuts, pretzels, potato chips that had been opened by patrons in the tavern but not depleted.

Leora was one to utter wise sayings. A favorite was a variant of Jacob Schwart’s: “Waste not, want not.”

Another, spoken with a downturn smirk of her mouth: “You made your bed, now lie in it.”

Leora drove a 1945 Dodge sedan left in her care by the incarcerated Bud Greb and sometimes, in one of her good moods, she could be prevailed upon to drive Katy and Rebecca into town, or along the Chautauqua River to Drottstown and back.

What was puzzling about Leora Greb, that Rebecca had yet to fully comprehend, was: she seemed to like her family, crowded together in that house. Leora seemed to like her life!

Katy acknowledged they did miss their pa, sometimes. But it was a whole lot easier without him. Not so much fighting, and friends of his hanging out at the house, and the cops showing up in the middle of the damn night shining their lights through the windows scaring the shit out of everybody.

“What they do, they yell through a bullhorn. Y’ever heard one of them?”

Rebecca shook her head, no. She wasn’t planning on hearing one if she could help it.

Katy told Rebecca, with the air of one confiding a secret, that Leora had boyfriends, guys she met at the hotel. “We ain’t supposed to know but hell, we do.”

These men gave Leora things, or left things in their hotel rooms for her, Leora passed on to her daughters. Or they’d give her actual money which was, in Leora’s voice, that was lyric and teasing as a radio voice, “Always wel-come.”

It was true, Leora drank sometimes and could be a real bitch picking and nagging her kids. But mostly she was so nice.

Asking Rebecca one day, out of the blue it seemed, “There ain’t anything wrong over at your place, hon, is there?”

Five of them were playing cards at the Grebs’ kitchen table covered in sticky oilcloth. At first, just Katy and Rebecca were playing double solitaire which was a fad at school. Then Leora came home, and got the younger kids, for a game of gin rummy. Rebecca was new to the game but picked it up quickly.

Basking in Leora’s casual praise she had a
natural ap’tude
for cards.

Rebecca had to adjust, what to expect of a family. What to expect of a mother. At first it shocked her how the Grebs crowded together at the table, jostling one another and laughing over the silliest things. Leora could get in a mood, she wasn’t much different from Katy and Rebecca. Except she smoked, one cigarette after the other; and drank Black Horse ale straight from the bottle. ( Yet her mannerisms were fussy, ladylike. Sticking out her little finger as she lifted the bottle to her mouth.) Rebecca squirmed to think what Anna Schwart would say of such a woman.

And the way Leora snorted with laughter when the cards turned against her, as if bad luck was some kind of joke.

Leora dealt first. Next, Katy. Then Conroy, Katy’s eleven-year-old brother. Then Molly who was only ten. Then Rebecca who was self-conscious at first, fumbling the cards in her excitement at being included in the game.

She was surprised by Leora’s casual question. She mumbled something vague meant to convey
no
.

Leora said, briskly dealing out cards, “Well, O.K. I’m real glad to hear that, Rebecca.”

It was an awkward time. Rebecca was close to crying. But Rebecca would not cry. Katy said, that whiny edge to her voice, “I told Rebecca, Momma, she could stay with us. If she didn’t, y’know, want to go home. Some night.”

There was a buzzing in Rebecca’s head. Must’ve told Katy some things she had not meant to tell. How she was afraid of her father, sometimes. How she missed her brothers and wished they’d taken her with them.

Rebecca’s exact words had been reckless, extravagant. Like somebody in a comic strip she’d said
Wished they’d taken me with them to Hell if that’s where they went
.

Leora said, exhaling smoke through her nostrils, “That Herschel! He was a real character, I always favored Herschel.
Is
a real character, I mean. He’s alive, ain’t he?”

Rebecca was stunned by the question. For a moment she could not respond.

“I mean to ask, did you people hear from him? That you know?”

Rebecca mumbled
no
. Not that she knew.

“’Course if your pa heard from Herschel, he might not tell you. Might not want word to get out. Account of, y’know, Herschel’s
fugitive status
.”

This was a term, both alarming and thrilling, Rebecca had never heard before:
fugitive status
.

Leora went on in her rambling way, to speak of Herschel. Katy said of her mother if you listened to her she’d tell you plenty, a lot of it maybe not intended. It was a revelation to Rebecca, Leora seemed to know Herschel so well. Even Bud Greb had known Herschel, before being sent away to prison. And Herschel had even played gin rummy and poker, right here at this table!

Rebecca was moved, to see how her brother was known to people in ways not-known to his family. It was a strange thing, you could live close to somebody and not know as much about him as others did. It made Rebecca miss him all the more, though his way of teasing had not been nice. Leora was saying, with girlish vehemence, “What Herschel did, hon, those bastards deserved. Taking the damn law in your own hands sometimes you got to do.”

Katy agreed. So did Conroy.

Rebecca wiped at her eyes. It made her want to cry, Leora saying such things about her brother.

Like shifting a mirror, just a little. You see an edge to something, an angle of vision you had not known. Such a surprise!

At school, nobody ever said a nice thing about Herschel. Only he was a
fugitive from justice, wanted by the police
and he’d be sent to Attica for sure where Ne-gro prisoners from Buffalo would cut him up good, himself. Get what he deserved.

The game continued. Slap-slap-slap of sticky cards. Leora offered Rebecca a sip of her ale and Rebecca declined at first then said O.K. and choked a little swallowing the strong liquid and the others laughed, but not meanly. Then Rebecca heard herself say, as if to surprise, “My pa’s some damn old drunk, I hate him.”

Rebecca expected Katy to burst into giggles as Katy always did when a girlfriend complained in harsh comic tones of her family. It was what you did! But here in the Grebs’ kitchen something was wrong, Leora stared hard at her holding an uplifted card and Rebecca knew to her shame that she’d misspoken.

Leora shifted her Chesterfield from one hand to the other, scattering ashes. Must’ve been the Black Horse ale that had provoked Rebecca to utter such words, making her want to choke and laugh at the same time.

“Your pa,” Leora said thoughtfully, “is a man hard to fathom. People say. I would not claim to fathom Joseph Schwart.”

Joseph!
Leora didn’t even know Rebecca’s father’s name.

Rebecca shrank, in shame. The harsh monosyllable
Schwart
was stinging to hear. To know that others might utter it, might speak of her father in a way both impersonal and familiar, was shocking to her.

Yet Rebecca heard herself say, half in defiance, “You don’t have to ‘fathom’ him, I’m the one. And Ma.”

Carefully Leora said, not looking at Rebecca now, “What about your ma, Rebecca? She keeps to herself, eh?”

Rebecca laughed, a harsh mirthless sound.

Katy said, to Leora, in a whiny triumphant voice as if the two had been arguing, and this was the crushing point, “Momma, see? I told R’becca she can stay with us. If she needs to.”

Too slowly, Leora sucked on what remained of her cigarette.

“Well…”

Rebecca had been smiling. All this while, smiling. The hot sour liquid she’d swallowed was a gaseous bubble in her gut, she could feel it and worried she might vomit it back up. Her cheeks were burning as if they’d been slapped.

All this while, Conroy and Molly were fiddling with their cards, oblivious of this exchange. They had not the slightest awareness that Rebecca Schwart had betrayed her parents, nor that Katy had put it to Leora, with Rebecca as a witness, that Rebecca might come live with them, and Leora was hesitant, unwilling to agree. Not the slightest awareness! Conroy was a large-boned child with sniffles and a nasty habit of wiping his nose every few minutes on the back of his hand and the mean thought came to Rebecca
If he was mine, I’d strangle him
and the wish to tell this to Leora was so strong, Rebecca had to grip her cards tight.

Hearts, diamonds, clubs…Trying to make sense of what she’d been dealt.

Can a king of hearts save you? Ten of clubs? Queen-and-jack pair? Wished she had seven cards in the same suit, she’d lay them down on the table with a flourish. The Grebs would be goggle-eyed!

Wanting nothing more than to keep playing rummy forever with Katy’s family. Laughing, making wisecracks, sipping ale and when Leora invited her to stay for supper Rebecca would say with true regret
Thanks but I can’t, I guess, they want me back home
but instead there was Rebecca tossing down her cards suddenly, some of them falling onto the floor, Rebecca pushed her chair away from the table skidding and noisy, God damn if she was going to cry! Fuck the Grebs if they expected that.

“I hate you, too! You can all go to hell!”

Before anyone could say a word, Rebecca slammed out the screen door. Running, stumbling out to the road. Inside, the Grebs must have stared after her, astonished.

There came Katy’s voice, almost too faint to be heard, “Rebecca? Hey c’mon back, what’s wrong?”

Never. She would not.

In April, this was. The week after Gus left.

My pa’s some damn old drunk, I hate him
.

She could not believe she had uttered those words. For all the Grebs to hear!