Ghita Schwarz - Displaced Persons

Both men stopped. The room was quiet. Pavel saw that Fela stood in the doorway, her body wrapped in a bathrobe, her face a stone. But he could read the stone. It was wrong to scream in front of the children. You have mercy on everyone, she would say to him, mercy on everyone, how about for your family?

Weisenfeld said, Enough.

So, answered Pavel, his jaw still forward. Enough. And what else?

I will call your wife. He motioned to Fela, who followed him out of the kitchen into the hallway in silence.

The door closed, not loud. Pavel stood at the kitchen counter, watching his son and daughter, Larry’s hair combed straight, a napkin hanging over Helen’s neck to protect her shirt from stains.

Helen looked at him. “Will he scream at Ma too?”

No, he answered, still in Yiddish. Your mother doesn’t scream.

Larry carried his plate to the sink.

“What,” Pavel said. “Don’t you finish your food?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Me neither.” Helen picked up her plate too.

Pavel looked at the two of them, Larry scooping Helen’s plate from her hands, the little one pale, only a bite or two eaten. On an ordinary morning, Pavel would have insisted, he would have told them eat, kindlech , eat, a person’s breath when he doesn’t eat is a terrible thing, not even brushing your teeth will cover it, eat, how will you concentrate in the day, eat, you are growing, eat, eat. He thought he saw Larry wait a moment for the speech to begin, but at this moment Pavel didn’t have the strength to beg them to put something in their bellies. He turned his back so as not to see his son push the uneaten bread into the garbage.

“We’re late for school, Dad.”

I can drive you, Larry. You won’t be late if I drive.

“Then you’ll be late for work. We’ll just go now, okay?” Helen took off her napkin, then went to collect her schoolbag.

Pavel looked at his son, now quickly rinsing the plates with a spatter of water.

“Okay, Dad, okay?”

Pavel thought he saw his son’s nose turn pink, almost red. Was he about to cry? But Larry was looking away, putting the milk and cream cheese back in the refrigerator.

“Dad, I’m talking to you.”

“Okay,” Pavel answered. “Everything’s okay.” He reached out his hand to touch his son’s shoulder. Larry shrugged from under his touch, then hurried to the coat closet for his jacket and scarf.

B EREL WANTED A SUIT. He mentioned it to his son-in-law one Sunday morning. He mentioned it while standing at the back door of the apartment, watching Chaim polish his shoes. Chaim, who sat on the third step of the building’s rear stairway, responded without looking up: A suit. I know a place.

Yes, said Berel, I’d like to buy a suit like the suit you wear. Something like that.

Chaim worked in one of New York ’s radio stations, where he used his smooth if accented English to fit in easily with the other technicians and engineers, who had bought him a new tie last year for his thirty-third birthday. Chaim wore a different suit every day. He had five. He had ten shirts, all blue or white or pink or yellow, and combined them in different orders with the suits.

Chaim said, Go to the place I go. Only go there. The tailors speak Yiddish. I know the owner from before. I’ll tell him you’re coming. The ankle of each shoe Chaim polished glimmered at the seams. They were good shoes, solid black leather with a layered black sole.

Those are good shoes, said Berel.

They are, said Chaim. Nothing like American, no?

No, said Berel. Chaim was right. In the dairy where for seven years Berel had scooped out milk curds from metal barrels and for the next seven had operated the machine that sealed shut the plastic milk bags, he had worn heavy brown boots. They had come apart at the soles from too much contact with the cleaning fluids; in fourteen years he had gone through eight pairs, all produced in a kibbutz factory from which the dairy bought supplies. Chaim was right, but he said that phrase, nothing like American, only American, too often. Berel wasn’t emigrating. He had made that clear.

It was August, three months after Berel’s wife had died of a typhus relapse in a small hospital in Tel Aviv, two weeks into Berel’s grief-trip to America to visit his only daughter. He had been in Tel Aviv or nearby since 1949, sixteen years, longer than he’d lived anywhere since childhood. Yes, his wife had died. His daughter Sima was here. But Berel’s home was there, the home he had made, alive on the stove where his wife had boiled soup out of eggs and water and potatoes, alive in the small freezer where he kept his sharp, homemade seltzer. He had less there, but also more. He could do for himself. Besides, he wasn’t so alone. He had a surviving brother in Jerusalem, and a sister in Rehovot. They were married, but they were older, and Berel was not yet sixty; what would they do without him?

He wasn’t emigrating, yet he wanted a suit. For no reason. The clothes he had, short-sleeved shirts and plain trousers, were enough. But his nephew could replace him at the dairy for up to three months; his wife had saved the German reparations money they had started to receive; perhaps he would stay in New York for the High Holidays; he would need a suit for synagogue in America. Chaim was lanky, with a flexible, loose-jointed sway to his walk; nothing he had would fit Berel’s round body. But Chaim wasn’t one to ask for reasons. He accepted the stupid occurrences and irrational violences of the world, and he accepted particularly the odd desires of others to sell and to buy. He accepted and he advised. He wrote down the address of the tailor and told Berel to take the number five bus from Riverside Drive.

BEREL WAITED. IT HAD been very humid, and he spent his days with the baby, inside at noon and outside after four, when the air cooled. He walked sometimes a few blocks uptown, to the garden of the church of St. John the Divine. Sometimes he went a kilometer south, to look at the stone memorial to the war, hidden in the bicycle lanes at Riverside Park. The baby was six months old and could crawl on the grass. She could laugh. She pushed the buds of her teeth against stale bagels and rubbed her head at Berel’s shoulder. He talked to her in Yiddish and sang to her in Hebrew. No Polish! He didn’t want her to hear it. She stared up with purpose and seriousness and made noises to his songs. They hummed at each other in the living room and the street and in Riverside Park, where Berel pushed the perambulator Tuesday to Friday afternoons while Sima rung up postcards and art books and little reproductions of classical sculptures at the cash register of the Met’s enormous gift shop. He fed the baby from a bottle, filled with formula, from a grocery; she was weaning.

He went to the tailor’s, finally, on a Monday, when Sima had her day off and could stay home the whole day. The directions were complicated: bus, long blocks, short blocks, narrow alley. One had to climb a dank staircase, but once inside the shop, Berel thought the place was wider than the building itself. It wasn’t that it was so filled with clothing, although there were several racks on which hung rows of suits in wool and serge and even perhaps cotton. It was the mirrors on the opposite side of the door, mirrors folded in threes and reflecting off each other, that made the place seem large.

“Can I help you?”

“Hmm?” said Berel, startled. But the question was one he understood.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Berel said. “I look for Pavel Mandl.” It came out quickly, easily, a sound he had used before in a context he no longer remembered. The little bit of paper on which Chaim had written the name lay folded in Berel’s pocket.