Davita's Harp (21 page)

“We all ought to care very much about this war,” Mr. Dinn was saying. “If Franco wins, Hitler has a green light.”

“I don’t believe it for a minute,” Mr. Helfman said. “What green light? What? Hitler is a clown and a yold. What will he do?”

“Hitler is not a clown,” Mr. Dinn said quietly. “It would be a dreadful error if we thought he was.”

“What can he do?” Mr. Helfman asked. “You think America and England and France will let him do what he wants? Not a chance.”

“They have been letting him do what he wants for years,” Mr. Dinn said. “That’s why Franco is winning in Spain. That’s why we have the choice we have today: fascism or communism. What a choice! It’s like choosing between Sedom and Amorrah.”

David sat in an easy chair next to his father. From time to time he raised his eyes and glanced at me. His eyes were sad and dark in the milky whiteness of his face, and his neck, sticking out of the collar of his too-large shirt, gave him a scrawny, birdlike appearance.

“I don’t know if Uncle Jakob is still writing about the war,” I said to Mr. Dinn. “Uncle Jakob wrote to us that he’s tired of the war.”

“Is he?” Mr. Dinn said without apparent interest.

“He wrote that both sides in the war are terrible and that he wants to come to America.”

“Jakob Daw wants to come to America?” Mrs. Helfman said.

Mr. Dinn turned to me. “When is he coming?” There was a vague tightness in his voice.
“He doesn’t know. My father wrote that the Americans won’t give him a visa. So they’re going together to Bilbao. That’s a city in the north of Spain.”

“Yes, I know where Bilbao is, Ilana. Why are they going to Bilbao?”

“I don’t know. Mama says maybe Papa wants to help Uncle Jakob get back across the border into France.” There was a brief silence.

“Perhaps we should make Kiddush and wash and eat,” Mrs. Helfman said quietly. “Everything is ready.”

We moved to the table. Mr. Helfman poured wine from a silver beaker into the silver cups. He and Mr. Dinn had large cups; the other cups were small. We stood in front of our chairs as Mr. Helfman, holding up his cup, began to chant the prayers in a thin, unmelodious voice. I could make out some of the words; I had seen them in one of the books Ruthie had given me and in the synagogue prayerbook. “Boruch atuh Adonoi, elohainoo melech hu’olum….” He chanted slowly, and when he was done, everyone said, “Amen.” He sat down and drank from his cup. Then he stood again as Mr. Dinn began to chant the same prayer. David stood next to his father, his head turned slightly sideways, gazing up at him. I could see his lips mouthing the words.

Mr. Dinn finished. We all said, “Amen,” and sat down in our chairs and drank from our cups. Then we all filed into the kitchen. Ruthie showed me how to wash my hands with the special two-handled beaker. I didn’t know the blessing for washing one’s hands; nor did I know the blessing over bread; but when Mr. Helfman made the blessing and cut the challah, I answered, “Amen.”

The challah was warm and light and had a sweet taste.

We sat around the table, eating and talking. I had been placed next to Ruthie and across the table from David and his father. Ruthie’s parents sat at opposite ends of the table. The talk among the adults was about the yeshiva and its new principal, a devout young man from England; about its English and Hebrew teachers and board of directors; about something called the Akiva Award; about the run-down condition of some of the classrooms; and about the school’s serious money problems. “People don’t have jobs, how can they give to a yeshiva?” Mr. Helfman said. I didn’t understand most of what they were saying. Ruthie sat eating quietly, her face a blank. David listened but said nothing.

Between the soup and meat courses, Mr. Dinn steered the conversation back to the war in Spain until Mr. Helfman said, “It is against the law to talk of matters that might disturb one’s Shabbos.” Mr. Dinn broke off. We did not talk of Spain again during the meal.

Two of the three candles on the buffet sputtered and died.

Mr. Helfman asked me what I was studying in public school and began to compare my subjects with those taught in the yeshiva. There was haughtiness in his voice as he went along claiming superiority for the yeshiva curriculum.

“How are your grades, Ilana?” Mrs. Helfman asked.

“I get nineties and hundreds,” I said.

“I’ll bet you do,” said Mr. Dinn. “So did your mother.”

From across the table David was looking at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.

On the buffet the guttering flame of the third candle suddenly flared, leaped upward, flickering wildly, and was gone. A thin column of dark smoke spiraled slowly toward the ceiling.

“Ilana, would you like to help me bring in the dishes?” Mrs. Helfman asked.

From inside the kitchen, which was now cluttered with dirty pots and dishes, I heard David and his father and Mr. Helfman talking together about something I didn’t understand. They spoke briefly in English, then slipped into Yiddish. Mr. Dinn and Mr. Helfman went on talking Yiddish, but David kept going from one language to the other.

Mrs. Helfman saw me listening and said, “They are discussing tomorrow morning’s sedra—the reading from the Torah.”

“David knows almost all the Torah by heart,” Ruthie said proudly. “David is a genius.”

“Bring in the cake,” Mrs. Helfman said to Ruthie. “And don’t brag so much. You’ll bring upon us the evil eye, God forbid.”

Later, as we sat around the table near the end of the meal, Mr. Dinn leaned back in his chair, cleared his throat, and proceeded to deliver a little sermon. His forefingers tucked inside his vest pockets, he began in his sonorous voice to describe how God came down to Mount Sinai thousands of years ago in order to give the Torah to the Jewish people. The mountain was all covered in smoke, he said. There was thunder; lightning flashed from the clouds. The Torah was written in fire on tablets and the tablets were then wrapped in fire. Moses’ face shone with light as he held them. “Only Moses could touch that sacred fire,” said Mr. Dinn. “And that sacred fire could not be tampered with. The Sanctuary in the desert also had a special sacred fire, and only on that fire was one permitted to offer a bird or an animal as a sacrifice to God. Tomorrow’s sedra tells us that the sons of Aaron the high priest brought their own fire into the Sanctuary and were killed. A strange fire must never be brought into the heart of the Sanctuary where the sacred fire of God is found. From this we can learn that we must preserve with care the sacred fire of our Torah, its laws, its words, and never permit it to be mixed with strange fires from the outside.”

As he spoke I noticed David and Mr. Helfman and his wife glance at me from time to time as if to gauge my reaction to his words. But I could not understand much of what Mr. Dinn said. Mr. Dinn and Mr. Helfman then talked awhile longer about the
mysterious deaths of the sons of Aaron. David joined their conversation. Ruthie and Mrs. Helfman sat listening. Then they all began to sing zemiros. There were phrases in the zemiros that I recognized. Mr. Dinn seemed surprised to see me join in the singing. I sat quietly through the many songs I didn’t know, listening, trying to memorize the lines that were being repeated. Sometimes I just sang the melody without the words. Nine months earlier, on a sultry Friday night, I had listened to David and his father joyfully singing these songs on the porch of their house in Sea Gate; now I was singing with them. I had no idea what the words meant; I just enjoyed the music, the lilt and rhythm of the melodies, now slow and now fast, now melancholy and now joyous.

At a pause in the singing Mr. Dinn leaned forward and placed his long arms on the table and said, “Well, I see you enjoy singing, Ilana. You know, there’s an interesting story told about King David and his harp.” He adopted again that serious and sonorous tone. “King David was a great musician. When he slept his harp hung from the wall over his bed. The winds are strong in Jerusalem. Each night the wind would blow through the strings of the harp and the harp would begin to sing. King David would wake and listen awhile to the music of his harp, and then spend the rest of the night studying Torah so he could be a strong and wise king. An interesting story.” He smiled down at me in his distant and courtly manner. “Let’s sing some more.”

The air in the room grew warm. Mr. Dinn and Mr. Helfman and David removed their jackets and sat in their shirt sleeves, singing. There was color on David’s normally pale face and his eyes were shining. He sang in his high, thin voice, with his eyes closed and his body swaying back and forth. We sang for a long time. Then they sang and chanted the prayers that ended the meal. And when the singing was done, Mr. Dinn and David and Mr. Helfman got into a discussion about a point raised earlier concerning the sons of Aaron. They were deep in this talk a few minutes later when, suddenly, jarringly, the doorbell rang.

Mr. Helfman looked up, surprise on his round face. A shadow
passed over Mr. Dinn’s abruptly stony features. Mrs. Helfman said, “It must be your mother, Ilana.” Ruthie went to the door.

I heard my mother’s voice and her footsteps in the hall. She came into the living room with Ruthie. She looked weary and ashen. Her hair was in disarray beneath her dark beret. She stood blinking her eyes in the brightness of the living room and gazing at the people around the table.

“Hello, Ezra,” she said evenly. “How are you?”

“I’m well, Channah,” Mr. Dinn said, after a pause. “And you?”

“I’m very tired.”

“Your rally went well?”

“Very well.”

“You spoke?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad for you that it went well.” His manner was stiff and polite.

There was a brief silence.

“David, how are you?” my mother asked.

I saw a slight stiffening of David’s thin form. “I’m okay,” he said with some sullenness in his voice.

My mother said to Mrs. Helfman, “Thank you for taking care of Ilana.”

“A pleasure and a joy,” Mrs. Helfman said.

“Anytime,” Mr. Helfman said. “A smart girl, a bright girl.” He said something in a language I didn’t understand. My mother smiled wearily.

“Channah,” Mr. Dinn said.

My mother turned to him.

“Call me Monday morning about Jakob Daw’s visa. There are people in Washington I can talk to.”

My mother looked at him, then looked at me. “If you want me to, I’ll help,” Mr. Dinn said. My mother nodded slowly, wearily. “Good night, Channah,” Mr. Dinn said. “Good night, Mrs. Chandal,” Mr. Helfman said.

“Good Shabbos, llana,” David said.

At the door, Mrs. Helfman said, “You’re sure you don’t want a cup of tea? You look exhausted.”

“I want to go to bed,” my mother said. Ruthie said, “Good Shabbos, Ilana.”

“Good Shabbos, Ruthie. Maybe I’ll see you in shul in the morning.”

“Good night, Mrs. Helfman, Ruthie,” my mother said.

We started along the hallway to the stairs. A dull heavy silence brooded over the house. I could hear the echoes of our footsteps.

“Mama?” “Yes.”

“You shouldn’t ring their doorbell on Shabbos. They don’t use electricity.”

She paused for the briefest moment on the stairs, then continued along beside me. “I’ll try to remember, Ilana.”

“Were there lots of people at the rally?”

“Thousands. Many thousands.”

“And you gave a speech?”

“Yes.”

We were on our landing but not yet at the door, and she was already removing her coat and beret.

“Mama, did you go to school with Mr. Dinn?”

“We went to Brooklyn College together a long time before you were born.” She fumbled in her purse for the key, hampered by her coat, which she had thrown over one arm. As she put the key into the door, she murmured to herself, but clearly enough for me to hear, “I am so tired…. Who can get used to this? After so many years together, to come home alone and go to bed alone and wake up alone….”

The harp sang softly as we entered the apartment.

The web of sunlight upon my curtain woke me. I dressed and ate quickly. In a dream during the night I had heard my mother crying. I peered into her room and saw her curled up in sleep,
looking frail and small, her mouth slightly open, the morning light giving her smooth face an ivory pallor. I went from the apartment and the house and walked in the cool April morning air to the synagogue.

Some days before, I had wandered about the apartment in an aimless and brooding reverie and had found myself in my parents’ bedroom looking at the bookcase that stood alongside the desk. I discovered an English Bible. I took it along with me. Inside the synagogue, I found my seat near the curtained wall. An old woman helped me find the Torah reading. I read slowly and carefully the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of Leviticus. The English was very difficult and I did not like the parts about killing a calf and dipping a finger in the blood and pouring the blood on the altar. I wondered if that was how everyone once worshipped God. I was not surprised that my parents did not believe in God or prayer. Blood and altars and burning kidneys and fat! I read carefully how the sons of Aaron were killed while bringing strange fire before the Lord. A fire went out from the Lord and killed them. I could not understand why they had to be killed for that. I read slowly about the animals the children of Israel were permitted to eat and about those they were prohibited from eating. There were creatures whose names I didn’t know: coney, ossifrage, ospray, kite, cormorant, gier eagle, and lapwing. But I knew hare and swine and vulture and owl. I read very carefully and slowly but didn’t understand what cloven-footed and cheweth the cud meant. But I understood about creeping things that went about on the belly and had more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth: I thought those words meant anything that had lots of legs. I understood about that. I remembered the roaches and bedbugs in our past apartments and the insects on the screens of the porches in Sea Gate: flying, crawling, whirring, buzzing, tapping.

Outside in front of the building after the service I went over to David and wished him a good Shabbos and said I couldn’t understand why God killed the two sons of Aaron just because they
were using strange fire. It seemed a very cruel punishment, I said.