Stuffed (19 page)

So I take Aunt Gertie’s meat loaf out of the freezer. “We’re going to have Aunt Gertie’s meat loaf!” I tell my children and pop it in the microwave. It comes out steaming, but the hard-boiled eggs are so hard I can’t slice through them.

“Gross,” my daughter says.

“Can we order Chinese?” My son looks hopeful.

We have raisin bran.

Hank Morgen tried to escape the Nazis on skis. Here he teaches my son, Peter, to use them.

CUCUMBER SALAD

I met Uncle Hank at one of my grandmother’s seders. By then he was in his fifties. My grandmother’s seders were the same as her Thursday-night dinners with the addition of the three M’s: matzo, macaroons, and Manischewitz. And everybody got a hard-boiled egg. An egg has no beginning and no end. It symbolizes eternal life. You dip the egg in a finger bowl filled with warm salt water, tears of mourning shed by Jews. You dip life into tears, then eat it. We set a place for the prophet Elijah and left the back door open. Elijah was the Jewish Santa, dropping by every house on the big night. We didn’t have a Passover service. We didn’t have prayer books. Our religion was getting together at my grandmother’s to eat. Once, on the swings in the playground, a little girl said to my sister, “I’m Catholic. What are you?”

“I’m Jo Ann,” my sister said.

Hank showed up at the seder with his wife, Hedy. He nodded in an Old World way when we were introduced. He looked more like my grandfather than my grandfather’s son did. Their eyes were the same gray. Their cheeks were flat planes. Both had a pinkie that didn’t bend.

“How olt za children ah?” Hank beamed at them.

“How olt
ah
za children,” Hedy corrected him.

“How olt
ah
za children?”

“Six and three,” I said.

“Zay ski, ya?”

“They’re too young!”

“No! Zay are ready. Peter! Polly! Ve go to ski together? I teaches zem, ja?”

“I
teach
zem.” Hedy rolled her eyes.

Hank lit up when he saw us. We lit back. What good luck to discover new and loving family. A ski trip was planned. Suddenly the four of us were spending New Year’s with Hank and Hedy at a ski lodge, sipping champagne and downing port-soaked prunes broiled in bacon.

They came for dinner. They visited us on vacation. They joined us for the holidays. Gifts arrived. Hank ran an officesupply company. I’d come home from work, and there outside my door would be a lifetime supply of black plastic garbage bags. A box of Quick Dry Wite-Out. A state-of-the-art stapler or a half gallon of rubber cement. A stepped set of Magic Markers and a gross of Pentels. A three-hole punch. In the hallway off our kitchen I labeled a cardboard carton UNCLE HANK’S BOX and filled it with binders, colored paper, glue sticks. Whenever the kids needed something for school, I’d say, “Check ‘Uncle Hank’s Box.’ ”

Hank reconnected to our family when he ran into my grandfather at a funeral. On Saturday afternoons, in the upstairs office at Morgen’s East, they would drink schnapps and eat sturgeon. There was a frenzy of reckless speculation: What does Hank want? What’s in it for him? Why the sudden interest? Aside from the Brooklyn Navy Yard restaurant swindle, no one had ever taken advantage of my grandfather except a young manager. Poppy loved Keith, “a German boy.” Checks in the store were numbered in sequence. My father noticed some were missing. The con was simple. When people paid cash, Keith pocketed the money and tore up the chit. My grandfather refused to believe a German boy would do this. He went into mourning the day they let Keith go.

On ski trips I’d go antiquing with Hedy. I’d drive around all day and look for a hanging-fern place for lunch while she complained about Hank. I hated those weepy, whiny betrayals. Why speak ill of your husband to me? Why berate someone I adored? On one of our aimless rides Hedy told me she had gotten pregnant once but lost the baby when she stuck her hand in the blades of an electric fan. Hank and Hedy were it now, the only survivors of their families, survivors with no survivors, the ends of two lines.

The one time Hedy invited me to their apartment, she signaled I should follow her into her bedroom.

“Sit”—she pointed to the bed—“I have something important to tell you.”

A great life lesson? I wondered. More complaints about Hank? But “Patty,” she said, “when you have za money to buy jewelry, listen to me.
Never
buy three things by za same designer. Za most you can buy is two. You can buy a bracelet and earrings. You can buy earrings and a necklace. You can buy za necklace and za bracelet. But listen to me, never earrings, a necklace,
and
a bracelet. Two is elegant, Patty. Three is tasteless.”

The first time I fixed cucumber salad for Uncle Hank he rested his wrists against the edge of the table. “Dahlink,” he said, “vot you call zis?”

“Vot do you call zis!” Hedy pounced.

More than anything else I made, he loved that salad.

“Oooouf!” He’d grunt a punched-in-the-stomach sound. “Dahlink! Zis is
fobulous
!”

So whenever they came to dinner or lunch or joined us on a picnic, I made cucumber salad with a variation of my grandmother’s salad dressing—a mayonnaise-based sauce with red wine vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper, and enough sour cream to make it thick enough for a fork to stand in it. I’d skin and seed the cukes, then slice them so thin they were transparent. I’d mix the sauce with a bunch of snipped dill and chopped parsley. I’d fold it all together and scrape it into a clear glass bowl so you could see the different greens.

“Dahlink, zis taste like heffen!” He would close his eyes.

“
Tastes
like heffen,” Hedy would tsk.

When Hank skied, he’d tuck an Anjou pear in the chest pocket of his jacket. Survivors commonly secret food. Food and diamonds, and one man I know, every morning a knife in his sock. When Hank would come into the lodge for lunch, he’d unzip his jacket, dive his hand in, and, voilà!, produce the pear like a magician. He’d smile at the pear, hold it up between his thumb and first finger, squint. Then he’d put the pear on his tray, composing
Still Life with Pear and Styrofoam Cup of Chili.
Hank was an orderly man. He cared how things looked. He liked to dress. He had an eye.

Hank was the only survivor our family had. I wanted to know about his mother, Anna, and what her porcelain store was like in Nowy Targ and the Morgenbesser Tavern his father, Leopold, owned, and how Anna found out the Nazis were coming.

“She told me and my brothers to go to Russia,” Hank said. “We would be safe there.”

It was winter. The four brothers set out on skis. The next morning, when they opened their eyes, they were looking into the barrels of German rifles. The brothers were loaded onto a cattle car. They didn’t have to wonder where they were going. Anna had told them what would happen if they got caught by the Germans. At night, when the train slowed, the brothers broke out.

“We were mountain boys. Dahlink, we run all day up za mountain. Is nothing. But the Nazis,
they have guns.
”

The Germans stopped the train. They flooded the mountain with searchlights and sprayed it with bullets. Hank kept running. When he was out of range, the Nazis sent dogs. Finally the Nazis turned off their lights. Only Hank and his brother Mundek were still running.

They recognized where they were. They headed home. In the morning Anna stuffed her remaining sons’ clothes with sausage and cheese.

“Go to Russia!” She pushed them out. “Find the Russians and don’t come back! The Russians are Allies! You’ll be safe with them!”

This time Hank was more cautious. He and Mundek knew the mountain. They’d grown up skiing to school and every weekend in Zakopane. On the third day they crossed paths with the Russians. But instead of being welcomed, they were stripped of their coats and boots. Hank and Mundek marched barefoot to a work camp in Siberia. When I look at pictures in the paper of Chechen detainees in a Chernokozovo “filtration camp,” I see the fear and misery on their faces. But I also see their high boots and downfilled jackets, and I wonder, How did he do it? How did Hank live?

When the Russian involvement in World War II intensified, Stalin decided he couldn’t waste manpower monitoring prisoners. Hank and Mundek were released to the British. The British sent them by boat to Palestine and then on to Scapa Flow, in the north of Scotland. There, supervised by General Bill Anders, they became part of “Anders’ Army” and joined a navy convoy.

“They give me one pair black socks,” Hank said. “One. I
love
those socks. Every night, in the sink, I wash them out.”

Hank trained as a medic, Mundek as a mechanic. When it came time to ship out, the brothers were put on different boats. While Hank was at sea, an American air corps captain was shot down. Hank dove into the water and rescued him.

Hank was assigned to care for the airman’s wounds. After the airman was sent home, a letter typed on stationery with a gold-embossed eagle arrived. “I don’t read English, dahlink,” Hank told me. “I have no idea what the letter say, but I think, Zis letter with za eagle, zis is important.”

When Hank’s ship docked in Glasgow, news arrived. Mundek had been killed. It was Yom Kippur.

“I went to
shul
to say
yiskah
for Mundek,” Hank said. “Then, during the service, I hear my name. I turn around. There is Mundek who has come to say
yiskah
for me!”

By the time the war was over, Mundek was dead. He’d been shot down in his parachute. Hank also learned the rest of his family had been killed. No one was left. Only two relatives in America he’d never met. He didn’t want to go back to Nowy Targ. Seven Jewish boys returned after amnesty looking for their families and were gunned down in cold blood. The war was over, but they were murdered by their neighbors.

Every day Hank lined up at the American embassy. Every day he was told the quota had been reached. Then he brought the letter with the eagle on it. The clerk read the letter. It was from the Secretary of Defense. It thanked Hank for saving the life of an American.

Hank was given a visa. He came to New York. Since L comes before M, he looked up the Lustigs instead of the Morgens. He went to live with Herman Lustig, his uncle in the restaurant business, instead of Herman Morgen, his other uncle in the restaurant business. Herman Lustig or Herman Morgen. You had to choose one. The Hermans didn’t talk. Somebody had given playing cards as a gift that said “Compliments of American Airlines.” Or one of the wives got a mink coat, and when the other wife saw it she said, “Is that nutria?” Someone left a wedding too early or stayed too late or pretended not to see somebody passing them on Broadway.

So we didn’t meet Hank until thirty-one years after he’d set foot on American soil. By then his hair was gray and because of this, although he was a cousin, we called him Uncle.

“I make za wrong choice,” Hank would tell my grandmother. “I should hof come to you.”

I was at the office the day Hank went in for exploratory surgery. The phone rang around eleven.

“Patty! He has cancer,” Hedy screamed. “All through his liver!”

A woman took the phone. “Are you a relative?” The voice was brisk.

“Yes.”

“You need to come to the Hospitality Room right away.”

When I got to the Hospitality Room, Hedy wasn’t there. I found her in the Emergency Room. She was gulping for air like a fish on a dock, her first panic attack. The doctor said she had palpitations. “How I can live wizout him?” she wailed.

In between chemotherapy treatments, those hope-logged rallies when his taste buds came back and the nausea disappeared and his energy resurged, Hank would ski. He was grateful for every reprieve. He’d come to our apartment for dinner, and I’d make cuke salad for him, and radiant, a human source of light, he’d scoop up my children and shower them with Pilot extrafine rolling-ball pens.

“Dahlink”—he took me aside on one of these occasions—“you know what I don’t understand? Why, out of everyone in my family, I was spared. Why should I be spared? For God to give me cancer? Can you tell me that, dahlink? Why
me?
”

The way he asked, it wasn’t hypothetical. Hank really thought perhaps I could help explain it. I couldn’t. How many people earn their fate? Suffering has never made sense. How should a survivor die? Quietly, at 104 in a soft feather bed? Or like my friend’s grandmother? Mrs. Johnson dropped dead in her kitchen reaching for a box of cornflakes.

Patty, dahlink,” Hank said a week before he died,

“Yes.” “you will take care of Hedy when I’m gone?”

“You won’t forget her?”

“I promise.”

Again the call at the office.

“Come!” she shrieks. I rush uptown. Hank is dead. In his room Hedy sits crying by the bed. He’s still in it, the sheet pulled over his head.

“Look at him,” Hedy says, ripping it down.

Hank is the color of a field mouse. His eyes are closed, but his mouth is in rictus. I want to touch him, but my hands won’t move. Silently I say, I love you. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want me to see you this way. I’ll forget I saw you this way. I’ll try. I love you. I will miss you, my darling dear. Thank you for being part of our lives.

Hedy comes to us for the holidays. We meet for lunch now and then. Soon she is saying how much she hates New York. Then she is saying that even though she hates New York, where else can she live? Florida is too hot. Canada, where she has a friend, is too cold. She doesn’t know anybody anyplace else. Why is she always trapped? Finally she sells her apartment for less than she hoped and moves to Tamarack, Florida. As soon as she gets there, she hates it. It isn’t near the beach. She doesn’t drive. She sells the house at a loss and flies to Toronto, where the winters are too cold but the American dollar goes far. She finds a “friend,” but he lives with his forty-eight-year-old son who is “a horse’s you-know-what.” Everything is a doomed proposition, like garlic-flavored mouthwash. Everything is unsolvable.

A friend of mine is invited to a seder at a psychiatrist’s house. At the end of the seder the host hands each guest a gift. It’s a sheaf of paper, a photocopy of Schindler’s List, the actual document. My friend offers me her copy. It’s shocking to hold Schindler’s List. It feels wrong to have it. A document lives hung on gets passed out like a party favor. Still that doesn’t stop me from looking for the name Morgenbesser. There are two. Hedy is the last one alive who might know if these Morgenbessers were family.

I call her in Toronto. She calls a friend of Hank’s. The Morgenbessers on Schindler’s List don’t match our family’s given names. The names Hedy finds out, names I’ve never heard before, are the names of Hank’s brothers who were murdered in the snow and his sister who was exterminated.