David Bezmozgis - Natasha and Other Stories

More months passed. A possibility here and a potential opportunity there. All of them came to nothing and my grandfather, never an optimist by nature, resigned himself to the fact that it was a lost cause. Some people had a talent for making things happen, he was not one of them. Once, during the war, he had had a chance to make some money. A man in Kyrgyzstan had a load of hats he wanted to move. Good woolen hats of a very desirable fashion. My grandfather and his brother had the inside track on the hats. One railway car to Moscow and they could have made a fortune. They could have been extremely wealthy men in Russia, but their father wouldn’t let them do it. He was a very honest man. He never invited trouble. So the hats went to someone else — who naturally made a fortune — and my grandfather worked with his hands for the rest of his life. Like the hats, so the apartment. My grandfather entertained no illusions, unless, of course, they were illusions of exaggerated bleakness.

All along, at the margins of the apartment search, there was one possibility that neither fully materialized nor completely disappeared. A building owned by the B’nai Brith was in fact subsidized. It was only a short bus ride from my grandfather’s current building. It faced a park. Most of the people in the building were either widows or widowers. On the ground floor was a common room where concerts were occasionally held. My grandfather had a few acquaintances who lived there and he felt the building would present him with more social opportunities. Since my grandmother’s death he had seen less and less of their old friends. My grandmother had always been the one to make the phone calls and the arrangements, and now that she was gone, he felt that most of their friends had indeed been her friends. On his own, my grandfather found it hard to break the old patterns.

The B’nai Brith building seemed the perfect solution. And, it appeared that there was a slim chance that he could gain a preferential place on their waiting list. Word had spread at the tiny Russian community synagogue that my grandfather was looking to find an apartment. This word had reached a popular and well-respected rabbi who knew my grandfather to be a pious man and regular synagogue attendee. This very fact made him an attractive candidate since the B’nai Brith building had its own one-room synagogue which was no longer drawing a minyan for Friday night and Saturday morning services. I couldn’t believe that, in a building whose entire population consisted of old Jews, they couldn’t find ten men, but my grandfather insisted that it was true. Even though the building was Jewish, the people were old. Some were sick, some were atheists, and more than half of the residents were women. It was a serious problem. The synagogue was Orthodox, and without ten Jewish men, they could not hold proper services.

Since I was conveniently between jobs, it was my responsibility to drive my grandfather to the B’nai Brith building to meet with Zalman, the synagogue’s gabbai. Zalman was a Romanian Jew who spoke Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and quite a lot of English. For years he had overseen the day-to-day running of the synagogue. If my grandfather could impress upon him his level of religious commitment, then Zalman would be able to use his influence with the building’s manager. The manager was sympathetic to the synagogue’s plight and might be willing to manipulate the waiting list in order to bring in the right kind of resident. In other words, a spiritual ringer.

On the way to meet with Zalman my grandfather repeated that it probably wouldn’t do any good. If Zalman could do anything, he would have done it long ago. The trip was a waste of time. Nevertheless, he clutched the letter of recommendation that the rabbi had written for him. I told him not to worry. He replied that when you got to be his age there was no longer much to worry about. Everything was in God’s hands. Who are we to know His plans? What is getting or not getting an apartment compared to losing a wife? God does what He does for His own reasons. If it was meant for us to get the apartment, then it would happen, if not, then not. What could anyone do? I said he could pray, but he didn’t get the joke.

The synagogue was indeed one room which was divided into two sections by a flimsy latticework partition. On the left was the women’s section; on the right the men’s. Each side could hold thirty people. Zalman pointed out what went where. Here the prayer books, there the tallisim are folded, over there the ark and the Torah. He opened up the doors so that we could take a look at the scrolls in their velvet cover. My grandfather said it was a very good synagogue and gave Zalman the rabbi’s letter. Zalman promised to do what he could, so long as we understood that there was no telling when an apartment might open up. Did we understand what it meant for an apartment to become available in such a place? Unfortunately, my grandfather said, he understood very well.

On the way out, Zalman escorted us through the lobby. We passed two Russian seniors who studied us with unconcealed malice. Zalman explained that these were two of the ones who wouldn’t come. Atheists, Zalman said. One a product of Stalin, the other of Hitler. But what do you say to a man who asks you where was God when the Germans were shooting his parents and throwing them in a hole? It isn’t a pleasant conversation. And who here didn’t lose someone to the Nazis? I lost my grandparents, three beautiful sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins. So what am I supposed to do, let the bastards win? Because who wins if a Jew doesn’t go to synagogue? I’ll tell you who: Hitler.

Three Russians who didn’t understand Hebrew sat in the back of the synagogue. One was missing an arm. Two Polish Jews sat in front of them. One had his place by the partition so that he could stretch his bad leg, the other kept his walker near for emergency trips to the washroom. I was between them and the front row where my grandfather sat with two other men. Herschel, a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, sat beside my grandfather, and Itzik, a taxi driver from Odessa, sat beside Herschel. Zalman was at a small table beside the ark. On the other side of the partition were half a dozen women. There was no rabbi and so the responsibilities for the service were divided between Zalman, my grandfather, and Herschel. The task of lifting the heavy scrolls fell to me, as I was the only one with the strength to do it. The Saturday morning services started at nine and lasted for three hours. Most of the old Jews came because they were drawn by the nostalgia for ancient cadences, I came because I was drawn by the nostalgia for old Jews. In each case, the motivation was not tradition but history.

After services everyone went to the common room for a kiddush. Zalman brought a bottle of kosher sweet wine and a honey cake. The Russian man with one arm contributed a mickey of cheap vodka. It takes only one arm to pour and only one arm to drink. Thank God, he said, at least here it is no disadvantage to be a one-armed man.

One of the women distributed the wine in small paper cups and also circulated a dish with the slices of cake. When everyone had drunk their wine and munched their cake, they wished one another a gut Shabbos and wandered alone or in small groups back to their particular lives.

On those mornings I accompanied my grandfather back to his new apartment, where we drank tea and played checkers. The new apartment was slightly smaller than the old. The brown sofa had been sold and replaced with a blue one. The brown sofa hadn’t folded out; the blue one did. (Now, in the event of familial tragedy, my mother and aunt wouldn’t have to spend the accursed nights on the living room floor.) The bedroom remained identical and in the kitchen were the same chipped plates and the same enamel Soviet bowls good for warming soup. I would spend a few hours with my grandfather, his only visitor all week. The change of locale hadn’t done much to improve his social situation. For every reason to leave his apartment he could always find ten to stay where he was. My grandfather had expected Zalman to make more of an effort, but Zalman was always preoccupied with unspecified concerns. He also had a wife. Only Herschel, the survivor who sat beside my grandfather, had extended invitations — to come over for tea, to read some Yiddish poetry, to play cards, to go for a walk in the park. He is a very intellectual man, my grandfather said. A professor.