Jewels and Ashes by Arnold Zable Read Free Book Online Page B

Poilishe. She knows how to look after me: a true sweetheart. Sometimes, mind you, she gets cold feet and runs to the priest. So let her confess! It does no harm. At such times I have many friends to spend time with. We take trips to the Tatras mountains, to Zakopane, Krakow, Gdansk, the Baltic Sea resorts, as I did during my youth. What more is there to say? This wilderness is for me a home, a habit I cannot break.’
    We emerge from the stairs into a crowded dining room with a dozen tables scattered over exposed floorboards. Nathan has donated a Kiddush, a little something to eat and drink for the Sabbath. We are served bread rolls and gefilte fish — imported from Hungary, Nathan informs me. On each table he places several bottles of vodka which are quickly consumed.
    The room sways with conversation. Guests circulate from table to table. A man seats himself beside me and announces, without introduction, that he has two brothers, both of whom are rabbis. ‘One lives in Brooklyn, the other in Buenos Aires. And I, may the devil have such luck, live in Warsaw, where there is no one you could call a rabbi.’
    Holding court at the same table is a visitor from New York. His face is set in a permanently sour expression. He is wearing a pink suit, mauve shirt, and a crimson tie which dangles over the gefilte fish as he proclaims: ‘My son is an adviser to the President. You’ve never heard of him? Of course not! How could you? He is no boaster. He maintains low profile.’ My newly acquired friend throws his well-worn refrain at Pink Suit: ‘I have two brothers. Both rabbis. One in Buenos Aires, the other in Brooklyn. Mermelstein is the name. Perhaps you know him?’ Pink Suit, annoyed at the interruption to his monologue, shoots back: ‘Know him? Why should I? You think I should know every Jew in New York?’
    A gaunt stalk of a man paces around the room, his eyes aflame as he mutters to any unsuspecting guest whom he ensnares with his relentless gaze. He is wrapped in a shabby suit, and his face has the corrugated tan of a tramp who sleeps by highways and in barns. He stutters angrily, in a monotone of broken English: ‘I have put my case to the chief rabbi of Israel. I wrote him a long letter. I sent also a copy to Gorbachev. Neither of them has replied.’ He strides away before he can be engaged in dialogue, and from time to time I hear his voice rise above the tumult with the same fierce lament. ‘What is his case?’ I ask Nathan. ‘Ah! Here everyone has a case’, he says. ‘They cling to their cases for fear of opening them and seeing, with finality, that they are empty, and were in fact emptied one lost generation ago.’
    Nathan waltzes back into the chaos. He is the attentive host, pouring a glass of vodka here, serving a slice of honey cake there, dispensing gusts of laughter and humorous remarks for dessert. The room dances with increasing abandon, a whirlpool of drink and talk at the centre of which sits Reb Greenbaum. A fertile beard flows from his cheeks, and he strokes it while he observes the revelry with a bemused smile. His eyes are a sheepish green, slightly moist, somewhat remote. He seems always to be hovering on the verge of a sigh. Nathan had pointed him out in the hall, totally absorbed in prayer: ‘He’s the only one in this shul that I can guarantee is one hundred per cent pious. The others come to talk, to do business, to pass the time. They are as pious as cats’, claims Nathan. ‘Only Greenbaum I can guarantee. He walks all the way from Praga, on the other side of the river, refusing any form of transport on Shabbes. The genuine article, one hundred per cent.’
    Everyone seems to be talking at the tops of their lungs, although at close range I realize many of them are actually whispering with an urgency which lifts their voices into stabs that punctuate the air. At the height of the storm a scream arises. A spasm