Ghita Schwarz - Displaced Persons

But nothing was too good for Kuba. Even if here they were more secure, with cheaper rent and plenty of customers who found them convenient, Kuba wanted something in the center. On occasion they went together to the wholesale dealers and damp workrooms on Seventh Avenue to look at the shops of some of their suppliers, and Pavel could sense Kuba looking at the jobbers’ shop floors with a bit of envy. He knew what Kuba longed for, a view every day of workers bent over long rows of wood and metal, a factory setting, where every item that changed hands was exchanged for money, American dollars, not favors or promises of future assistance from a button dealer or a ribbon salesman fallen on hard times.

Kuba made good accounts of the ledger books, and he oversaw Enzo’s tailoring with as much authority as was credible for someone with not too much expertise. He claimed to know textiles from his childhood, but the story seemed always to change, always to put Kuba, with each revision of the tale, in a wealthier, happier position before the war. The history was part of Kuba’s argument, that it was natural for him to oversee a group of workers. But Pavel did not like that image, everyone in a row at a long table, sweating and squinting, the buzz of machines like a broken orchestra. He did not like it. He preferred the family business small and customized, selling to his friends and his friends’ friends, people who knew they would be purchasing an expert suit often altered from someone else’s manufacture, once in a while stitched on their own as contract for another company. That was why he managed the relationships with suppliers and redrew the designs from their oral specifications, because they trusted him. Everyone knew him, and he knew everyone. Sometimes people brought in suits purchased elsewhere, because Freddy in the shop knew how to fix it just so, not just with the machine, but by hand. Was there something better? How would their little shop stand out among the bigs on Seventh Avenue?

If we moved there, Kuba would argue, we could be big.

Pavel never knew how to answer him. One did not go from small to big, but from small to less small, to slightly less small, all the way up to not so small. American business, yes, he thought. But Pavel had learned his lesson in Germany after the war. One time, just one time, he had tried to make big money, enough to feel safe to emigrate, and someone greedier, more ambitious-Kuba’s childhood friend, that swindler, that thief!-had almost killed him for trying. Pavel’s bones were still crooked, his skin still scarred, his body still pained. No more. The best progress was slow.

It had taken enormous effort to make it to their current location. In the early years Kuba had sold clothing from a hand truck while Pavel sent money from his black-market coffee business in Germany. It was only four years since an American cousin of Pavel’s lent them the capital to open a tailor shop under a real roof, and the loan was not yet repaid. Of course now it was Kuba who was the sophisticate. Would Kuba even know how to judge a row of inner stitching on a lapel without the skills Pavel had shared, skills acquired basting and sewing pockets for the same cousin? Would Kuba have anything if not for Pavel’s determination to make a family business? It was Pavel himself who had managed to win this latest contract, the third of its kind for them, and as a result they had hired the two cutters, each of whom kept a calendar with photographs of nude women at their workstations.

WHEN KUBA RETURNED HE sat at Pavel’s desk and opened his soup. I think we should talk a little, he began in Yiddish.

Pavel sighed.

About the lease.

Of course about the lease, answered Pavel. Always the lease. Do you have an idea for a better lease somewhere else?

I don’t know why you are against a big loan. It is what everyone does here. Since when are you so afraid? You had a bigger business in Europe, in and out of every zone.

Pavel said, Afraid?

Perhaps not afraid, said Kuba. But I don’t understand it. All the risks you took there! Hinda talks about it still.

Pavel said nothing.

Why, continued Kuba, should we be more cautious here, where here we have so much more safety?

Here we have children, said Pavel. He gave Kuba what he hoped was a righteous look. Mine will go to college, my daughter too.

Who says no? All I say is-

All you say, said Pavel, is that I am afraid. So!

Kuba’s face turned pink. You would think, after all we have done, you could consider how Hinda and I-

All you have done? Pavel said, his voice beginning to scratch. What, letting Fela and me stay in your apartment when we came with the baby? You want the rent back, I give you the rent back. I did not know it was such a favor.

That is not what I am talking about. Kuba made his back even straighter. That is not what I am talking about.

Pavel looked at him. A sound came out, then a sentence. Then what are you talking about, Jakub?

The pink from Kuba’s face subsided a little. But he did not answer.

Tell me. Let us not have secrets! We are family. Tell me!

There is no need to shout, Pavel.

Pavel breathed in. He was not shouting. But he would not dignify the accusation. And so what if he raised his voice? He had earned the right. Pavel’s cousin had started them in the business. Pavel’s friends helped them. But Kuba had friends who had tried to kill Pavel for profit, who could not clean out the stain of the war, who remained violent, criminal, who spread pain at the first opportunity.

What you did for me? Pavel breathed. Your friend, your dear friend Marek, could not even leave me with the coat on my body after he broke me into twenty pieces! Is this what I owe you for?

That is not what he said happened. Kuba looked Pavel straight in the eye and then took a step back, as if to see the impact of his words.

Pavel’s tongue moved in his mouth. What he said happened? Pavel’s voice came out in a low hum, shocked. What he said? You have spoken to him?

Hinda begged me not to say anything to you.

So, say it! It’s already out.

He came to us when you were still in Germany, and said you owed him money.

Pavel stared, uncomprehending. I owed him! he whispered.

He came to us here. He said he would report us as Communists from the past to the immigration authorities.

Communists!

He said you had visited your aunt Ewa in the Russian zone, he said you made deals, he said he could give proof that you, and we, all of us were associated with it, with the Red Army, did business to profit them-

You believed him! You believed him over-

It was not to believe or not to believe, said Kuba. It was a threat. We thought-

What did you pay him?

Kuba told him.

I need to speak to Hinda, said Pavel. I need to speak to Hinda.

Don’t upset her, said Kuba. Let me tell her first.

HIS AUNT HAD BEEN a Communist as long as he could remember, fleeing to Russia even before the war started. In Germany, just before Hinda and Kuba left the displaced persons camp for England, Pavel had come across a British captain with whom he did a little trading, before the restrictions made things too complicated. Indeed, the captain had not paid him in full, and Pavel had laughed off the debt in order to keep things smooth. When they ran into each other again, as Pavel was returning from his visit to his aunt in the Russian zone, the captain had driven him to an abandoned storehouse of parachute cloth. Pavel had wrapped his body in layers of artificial silk, covered the silk with his clothes, and returned home to Celle with material, just enough for a dress for Fela and a scarf for Hinda. He had never seen Hinda wear the scarf.

Hinda had always been jealous. When he married Fela she acted as cold and as careful with Fela as she had in childhood with their father’s new wife. But Kuba she worshipped. And because Kuba loved Hinda too, Pavel found it in himself to tolerate the occasional pretensions. If Kuba liked to make himself bigger than Pavel, so be it.