Son of a Smaller Hero (13 page)

“You’ll what?”

“Nothing.” Noah wiped his brow absently. “What can I do to help you?”

“I need money.”

“Money?” Noah sensed a way out. We send flowers to the sick. Money. He had thirty-five dollars in the bank. He knew it was cowardly of him, but all the same, he said: “I can give you thirty dollars.”

Shloime nodded, and Noah wrote out a cheque.

“I’m going,” Shloime said, taking the cheque. “But first I’ll tell you something. I don’t care a shit in hell if the old man finds out. I hate him. So do you. We got a lot to talk together. Look, you come out with me one night. You bring your broad and tell her to bring a friend. You …”

A voice came booming up the stairway. “Telephone for Mr. Adler.”

“Coming,” Noah yelled. He turned to Shloime. Once more, he was tempted to offer him something more tangible than money. A hand. Friendship. But the desire to be rid of him proved stronger. “I’m sorry, Shloime,” he said.

“Sorry?” Shloime paused at the door. “Hey, I wonder if it’ll be in the papers? Did you notice any photographers around? I mean – Christ … What time does the
Herald
come out? We call ourselves The Avengers.”

Noah had been sharp with Miriam on the phone because he needed her and she had not been able to come to him. He felt disorganized. He remembered that when they had been boys, he and Shloime had used to sit down on the cold concrete steps outside the synagogue to take off their roller-skates before going in for evening prayer. Inside the tattering Jews had used to pray in a failing light. Once the two of them had forgotten to go to the evening services, Melech had found them, his son and his grandson, playing chequers in the basement. He had ripped the chequers board to pieces and smashed their roller-skates against the wall.

Panofsky, his head bandaged, sat up in bed and sucked on his pipe. His grey, melancholy eyes were without their former unwavering quality. Aaron sat nearby in his wheelchair reading a book. He was a
gaunt man with intense black eyes and an honest mouth. He had used to be quite lively.

The room was papered yellow and three pictures hung on the walls. One of Marx; one of Lenin; and one of Mrs. Panofsky, who was also dead. The bureau was stained and scratched and several drawer knobs were missing. The room was warm. Warm, and worn out.

The doorbell rang. Rang again.

“It’s him,” Aaron said.

Noah stood in the doorway smiling lamely.

“How are you, Mr. Panofsky?”

“Fine, fine. Come, Noah. Sit down here by me.”

Noah sat down on the foot of the bed.

“How long do you have to stay in bed? What do the doctors say?”

Aaron wheeled over closer to the bed. “The doctors say that had he been hit just a bit harder he’d be dead. You tell him that.”

“Who? Who should he tell? I told you to stay quiet.” Panofsky turned to Noah. “I’m in the pink. Only one trouble I got. I can’t remember who hit me or what happened. The doctors say this is often the case when an old man is hit hard on the head. Enough. You tell us about you. How does it go?”

“Fine. Fine, Mr. Panofsky.”

“You studying?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“He’s nervous,” Aaron said. “I wonder why he’s nervous?”

“You stay quiet, I said.”

Aaron wheeled himself furiously out of the room. His face was taut.

“Aaron – you know – he’s not so well. You mustn’t pay attention.”

The evening Aaron had left, Noah remembered, there had been a big party at Panofsky’s. Many songs had been sung. Several of the girls had wept, for Aaron had been the tallest in the ghetto and he had known many of them well. The people of City Hall Street had
clubbed together and had bought him a typewriter.
Salud
, Panofsky had said. Don’t forget you should send us news.
Salud!

“So, say a few words.”

“I don’t believe you,” Noah said.

Panofsky leaned over and banged his pipe on the side of the bed. He pointed at the tin of tobacco on the bureau and Noah got up and fetched it for him. Panofsky began to fill his pipe slowly. He would have liked to have been able to explain to Noah, and to explain to Aaron as well, that in Russia the Cossacks had come time and again to ask questions and to take boys away: he would have liked to explain how he had felt when he had been confronted by the policeman. “Noah. Your grandfather, your
Zeyda
, is old. He hasn’t got many years left. He …”

“That’s not true either, Mr. Panofsky. There’s no great love between you and my grandfather. You …”

“He didn’t say it was Shloime because Shloime is a Jew.”

Aaron’s wheelchair blocked the doorway again.

“All right. All right. Now let me sleep already. I’m tired.”

“You’re not only tired, Paw. You’re old. I gave up my legs and you couldn’t even hand in that little thug. You should have told the old bigot when he came. Probably, though, he knows, anyway.”

Aaron looked hard at him and then backed out of the door.

“If he had hit me a bit harder I would have been dead. But I would have died somebody useful. A man who had spent his life for an idea. So look at me now. He’s right. I’m old. A storekeeper with a crippled boy and a pusher boy. What’ll be, Noah? I can’t die like this, my life for nothing. I should have turned him in no matter what.”

“There is not one boy in the neighbourhood who doesn’t remember you, Mr. Panofsky. Whenever we were in trouble we came to you.”

“Do you think I should have told the police? Or your grandfather?”

“No,” Noah lied. “I think you did right.”

“If I could only have his legs back for him. He’s a good boy. From the best. He …”

“He’ll be all right. He’s got the legs he gave up.”

“Are you a communist, Noah?”

“I don’t think so.”

“This is no answer.”

“Nothing is absolute any longer, Mr. Panofsky. There is a choice of beliefs and a choice of truths to go with them. If you choose not to choose then there is no truth at all. There are only points of view.…”

“Still, that is no answer.”

“What if there are no answers? Or if the answers offered are not suitable – what then? Perhaps there are only more questions.”

Going over the breakfront with a dust rag Leah remembered her father’s last illness like a tale that had been told to her by a stranger.

“Leah – Leah, did you … If – if there is a light …”

Oh yes. Years, years, years. An unending road of years, each one harder than the last. I had hopes for Wolf at first. Yes, hopes. But do you think that man would even take me to a concert? Or a speaker?
Vos fur a Gan Eden!
The endless noises of the street, the children shouting at their games, came up to her vaguely, heard but unabsorbed. Leah lay down on the bed. Presently,
Noah approached her dimly out of the dark, dark fog into which she wandered, a fog swirling beneath many, heavy seas; and approaching, stroked her not-yet-grey hair and said:
There will be a light. A magnificent light. Everything will be all right.

(Jacob Goldenberg came from Karlin. In those days, and earlier, cities derived their reputation among the Jews, not for their size or industry or politicians, but for the rabbis who presided over them.
Karlin, a small community just outside Pinsk, was celebrated for Rabbi Aaron, and later for Rabbi Yitzhok. Jacob Goldenberg was born a poet and, having lived too long in another country, died a character. He immigrated to Montreal in 1902 with his wife, Esther, and settled down in a cold-water flat on St. Urbain Street. There, two children were born to them. Leah and Harry. Jacob taught the children of the other immigrants Talmud, and, on Friday evenings, the other chassidim gathered in his parlour where they studied and sang and sipped lemon tea.)

Remember that time, remember, when Noah had pneumonia? And how, I ask, did my Noah catch pneumonia? Fighting a whole class of boys yet. Why? Because they were throwing snowballs at Felder the rag pedlar.…

(Man is the crown of creation. And when the Messiah comes all souls will flow together and return to be united with the Universal Soul, which is God. For the Evil One will be conquered and a New World will be established. Israel Baal Shem Tob, who was the founder of the Chassidic movement, taught that it is man’s highest idea to become the clear manifestation of God on earth. So he created the ideal of the Zaddik, of which he was the first. The Zaddik, or Chassidic saint, fuses his soul with the Oversoul. He contains the largest number of sparks of divinity, and God, who is forever with him, illuminates not only his spiritual life but even his most trivial conversation.)

Was there a Jew in Montreal who didn’t know – who didn’t have a good word for – Jacob Goldenberg the Zaddik? I can still see him plain as a picture. That nice beard and such deep brown eyes as you never saw and a sort of missingness about his mouth. Oh, father. All right, he gave away most of the small sums he earned. Harry, had he not won a scholarship, would have been unable to go to McGill. But
didn’t I adore him? Didn’t I take charge of the household when Maw died in 1918? Who used to save stale bread for him so that on winter mornings he could spread crumbs in the snow for visiting sparrows? Noah, listen, on our long walks through the ghetto people always pointed us out on the streets, and Paw often stopped to give advice or a blessing.

“Leah – Leah … if you see – if there is a light.”

Coming home bloody, my boyele, shivering, soaked to the skin. “It’s in His hands,” Dr. Holtzman said. A fine man, Holtzman. Paw taught him the Aleph Beth. So what happened when I had him up one evening with his awful
yentah
of a wife so that we could talk about old times? Wolf sat in the corner – bored! I remember Lou Holtzman, Wolf said. I remember him when he was a
pisher
with a running nose delivering milk for his father on St. Dominic Street. So … So he’s the doctor. I should put up a show for him? I am what I am. No shows. Left with a grey oxygen tent, and, inside, a grey-faced boy. Coughing, rasping.
Lord, Lord, take me instead
. He is only a boy.…

My father, may he rest in peace, saw beauty in every man.

“Garbor works on the sabbath,” Herscovitch told him.

“Poor Garbor. He is so good to his children. So in order to earn a living he must work on the sabbath.”

“Rosenberg is an atheist,” Felder said.

“Rosenberg? He who gives so much to the poor? Imagine how much he must suffer being without God.…”

Remember, Noah? Remember the stories he used to tell: “One Yom Kippur eve when the pious Jews of Berditchev assembled in the synagogue for
Kol Nidre
, Rabbi Levi Yitzhok did not appear. It was late. The sun had almost set. Can you imagine the state of the congregation? The fear, the anxiety. It grew darker, the time for
Kol Nidre
had passed, and still no rabbi! Messengers sent off to his home reported back that Rabbi Levi Yitzhok had long since left for the synagogue. Had the soldiers fallen upon him? The Jews scattered through the streets of Berditchev frantically searching for their
beloved rabbi. The worst was feared. But, finally, suddenly, he was discovered in a poor man’s hovel bending over the cradle of a howling infant. The infant had been left alone in the house when the parents had gone off to the synagogue.”

All right, what happened, happened. Around 1925 Paw’s leadership, his popularity, began to slip. But who was the first to notice that there were fewer pupils and a dwindling of disciples in the parlour on Friday evenings? Who? The men – some friends! (I should have a nickel – a penny – for each one of them that he helped.) Fancier rabbis they got themselves. Politer ones.
Noah beckoned wildly from within the fog
. “A light, Maw. A magnificent light. I see it.” Sure, sure, sure.
You think I don’t know he isn’t there – that I’m dreaming?

Why did he resent me taking him to school, and picking him up afterwards?
Do you know how many accidents there are every day?
Leah coughed softly, and sought a cooler spot on the pillow. 1925. Yes, that was the year. A stranger began to appear in our house. A dark, broad-shouldered man with bushy eyebrows. After having introduced himself as the son of a scribe – him, the son of a scribe! – he sat in the corner there like the cat’s meow on Friday evenings never asking questions – no, not him – or joining in the readings. You should have seen Melech in these days, Noah. Sitting there with his shoes unshined and – pheh – his fly unbuttoned. Paw only allowed him in the house
out of pity
, Noah. Melech sent his sons to study with Paw – but that had nothing to do with it. Paw
warn’t
flattered by Melech’s attentions. Times were hard, Paw needed pupils. But Melech knew what kind of – Paw was welcomed as a great man in Melech’s home. Why not? But Paw wasn’t fooled. You know what he said to me? “Who did Rabbi Levi Yitzhok love more than the peasants?” Oi, I laughed.

Listen, Noah, when Paw visited Melech he always brought me with him, and when Melech visited Paw he always brought that man – his eldest son – with him.

“This match was made in heaven,” Paw said.

“To marry my son into such a family,” Melech said, “is the greatest dowry that I could wish.”

Leah twisted in her sleep and sobbed quietly. Remember your first quarrel with Melech, Noah? Only a boy, yes, but you told that old – that old – that – who-knows-what … More brains than all of them put together, all of them, lying around like I don’t know what on Saturday afternoons with their shoes off and picking their noses and snoring and their feet smelling and telling each other filthy jokes they heard in the Gaiety probably and all frightened to death of their father; well my Noah isn’t!

Noah, in the months before the wedding I wrote him long poetical letters about love and the beauty of the soul. It’s like a burn remembering those letters. You can’t imagine.… The boys in Panofsky’s teased him.

“Well, Wolfy, it’s like any other bit of machinery. Comes the day in every man’s life when he’s got to put it into operation.”

Noah, Noah. He couldn’t understand why – the two of us living only four blocks apart – I wrote him those letters. When we were together I read to him from the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the poems of Lord Byron. Every night I cried myself to sleep.… Every night. Our marriage wasn’t consummated for several months. I … When Melech found out he spoke to Paw and Paw spoke to me and within a short time I was pregnant with you,
boyele
.