Part Ten
Gershon, 1917
Chapter 25

It took two weeks and cost Gershon another two hundred dollars before the request approved by the board snaked its way up the line, but at last he received a stamped authorization to obtain the telephone numbers of the men recruited the same week as Shmuel. He looked forward to gloating when he handed it to the Navy clerk who’d snubbed him, but someone else was on duty the day he returned. That clerk gave him the information, indifferent as to why he needed it.

Calling the long list of names left little time for Gershon’s clients or family. On the third Friday, Yetta resorted to the hand mirror. “You’re obligation is to your wife too,” she said, “as much as to your sister.” If she only knew how he’d once forfeited his sister in favour of his wife.

One by one, Gershon crossed off names: Shepherd Landry, Scott Lattimer, Stuart Leach. Parents told him their sons had gone to boot camp as close as Cape May, New Jersey, and as far away as San Diego, California. Some thought he was calling with bad news—a boy killed in a training accident before he’d even shipped out to sea—and were so relieved not to be told their sons were dead, that they turned talkative. Simon Lundgren’s mother, for example, complained to Gershon that her son had never so much as set foot in a rowboat. “They had to send him to a special boot camp for know-nothings. He writes that his stomach’s too empty and his brain’s too full for him to sleep at night. How they expect to make a sailor of that boy is anybody’s guess.”

A boot camp for those ignorant of boats. At last, a clue. When Simon’s mother told him it was in East Boston, Gershon hung up and boarded a train. By then, seven weeks had passed since Shmuel’s disappearance. Boot camp ended after eight. Standing in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Terminal, Gershon gazed up at the astronomical design on the ceiling and asked God to bless him on his journey. He hoped it would be smoother than the one he’d taken two decades earlier, but equally as successful in the end.

***

If he’d been a pessimist, Gershon would have seen that long-ago voyage across the Atlantic as a bad omen. The hold stank of human waste and seasickness. Yetta clung to him. She’d tried to be brave but she lost heart along with stomach lining. Carrying all they owned in four satchels, they boarded barges to Ellis Island where they walked single file under the sharp gaze of two public health officials, who had six seconds to determine whether they would be admitted to their new country. Thankfully, they reached the end of the line without any chalk marks to indicate the physical or mental defects that would send them to the infirmary or worse, back home.

Five hours after getting off the boat, they were issued landing cards and took a ferry and an elevated train to the Lower East Side. The streets were covered in horse manure, the same as in Lemberg. Gershon reached into Yetta’s valise for the silk scarf with which she covered her head when lighting candles. He tied it around her nose and mouth and led her to their two-room apartment on the top floor of a three-story walk-up. The hallway reeked of the spices of their new neighbours. He leaned against a grease-stained wall, overcome with exhaustion and disappointment. “The smell of America.”

Yetta recovered more quickly than he did. Removing the scarf and breathing deeply, she took a stew pot from her bag, plunked it on the stove, and reminded him that good news in the Torah was always preceded by a good meal. Then she went downstairs to get acquainted with the food peddlers they’d passed on their way, returning half an hour later with a chicken, onions, and some vegetables Gershon had never seen before. Without hesitation, she began to prepare dinner. Meanwhile, Gershon unpacked their few belongings. He placed his prayer book on the window sill. The Torah commentaries from his student days he left at the bottom of the satchel, which he shoved under the bed. Yetta called. Their first meal in America was ready.

Gershon kept his pledge to his father-in-law to do menial work if that’s what it took to support his wife. Every day except Saturday he trudged to a sweatshop where he swept floors for twelve or more hours, bringing home six dollars a week. When Shabbas came, he was too tired and sore to make love to Yetta, until one Friday evening he came home to find her reclining on a pile of pillows. She beckoned him beside her and pulled from the folds of her skirt the enamelled hand mirror he’d given her as a boy. “You remember the midrash from Exodus?” she’d asked.

Gershon smiled. The story went that when Pharaoh asked how Jewish slaves could be so prolific after days at heavy labour, he was told, “When women carry food and water to the men in the field, they bring a mirror for them to gaze at together. The women tell the men, ‘You are the most beautiful.’ ‘No, it is you who are the most beautiful,’ the men reply. They play this teasing game until the men are aroused. Then the women place bits of bread on their husbands’ tongues, wet their lips with water, and draw them into lovemaking.”

Yetta looked at Gershon’s tired eyes in the mirror. “You are the most beautiful.”

He gazed at the reflection of his wife’s dark, glittering eyes and protested that it was she.

Yetta lit the Shabbas candles. She held the cup of wine while Gershon said kiddush and lifted it to his mouth. When he finished the blessing over the challah, she pinched off a piece and put it between his moist lips. Together they carried the pillows back to the iron bedstead.

At first, Yetta, more than Gershon, turned the Mendels into Americans. On July Fourth, when he got a day off in the middle of the week, it was she who insisted they take the elevated line to Coney Island and ride on the carousel. “How did you hear of such wonders?”

“You listen instead of talk all the time, you learn,” she said. They snuggled in the tiny sleigh and gaped at the painted horses that reminded them of her father’s carriage in Lemberg.

That night, in the oven-like heat, it was also Yetta who insisted they sleep on the fire escape like their neighbours. Gershon was embarrassed, but she fashioned curtains from the silk scarves she’d bought, convinced that someday they’d own a piano to drape them over. When Gershon had succumbed and stripped to his undershirt, his wife surprised him one more time.

He stared suspiciously at the big half-circle of strange-looking fruit. “What’s this?”

“Watermelon.” Yetta turned as pink as its flesh as the juice dribbled down her chin.

Gershon did the same. America’s streets weren’t paved with gold, but its fruits were the colours of jewels, and promised riches just as sweet.

Yetta continued to accept poverty more easily than Gershon. To her it was an adventure leading to the future; to him, a source of shame evoking the past. Gradually, however, lulled by the rhythm of the broom by day, and Yetta’s contented breathing at night, he began to dream of the future again too. So, when he saw a handbill for free classes at the College of the City of New York, he enrolled. Instead of immersing himself in words as he’d done all his life, he decided to give numbers a chance and studied accounting at night. It took him five years to get his degree. In the meantime, he wrote to his sister about life in America, and she wrote back about the shtetl.

Dearest Rivka: We’ve taken in a roomer who sleeps next to the stove, and four borders who take meals with us because they have no one to cook for them. I wanted to charge extra for Shabbas dinner but Yetta said feeding them on Friday night was an act of tzedakah and sat them at our table for free. I’m humbled by her goodness. You and your friends in Lemberg misjudged her.

Dear Gershon: Life continues to get harder. The rest of the country is industrializing, but Galicia is kept rural to grow food for the cities. Peasants suffer and take it out on us Jews. Thank God we have had no pogroms, but last week when Avram tried to collect payment for a pair of boots he’d mended, the farmer ran him off with a pitchfork and accused him of being a gonif.

Dearest Rivka: We celebrated our first year in America with the birth of our daughter Zipporah, named for Yetta’s aunt. With an infant in the house, we no longer have a roomer, but fees from the borders paid for a dresser and a baby carriage. I like my accounting classes, but I miss words, so I started a Torah study group at the synagogue. When the men discovered I’d been personally tutored by the rabbi, they asked me to lead the sessions. I’m also giving English lessons. You may remember how, even as a boy, I hung around the peasants and was quick to pick up another language. The old immigrants want the new ones to learn English and stop speaking Yiddish. It is a source of tension, but I side with the settled ones, a sign I’m becoming a true American.

Dear Gershon: After we buried Papa, Mama took ill and the feldsher said she would not make it to Chanukah. On a happier note, I am pregnant. The baby will be born in the new century. Avram is hoping for a boy. We will name him Shmuel, after my late father-in-law.

Dearest Rivka: We too have a new baby, another girl, named Ruchel. Yetta apologized for not giving me a son, but I prefer a house full of women. I won’t have to scold them to study or worry about what they will become. Their mother will teach them to make a good home, and be patient and generous like her. I am done with my classes and have begun to advise clients. We moved to a bigger apartment and no longer have borders. There is a separate room for the children, and I bought Yetta a piano. Now that Avram’s mother has passed on too, you should come to America. I can sponsor you and we have room for your family to stay with us until you get settled.

Dear Gershon: Thank you for your kind offer, but Avram refuses to accept it.

Dearest Rivka: Your husband is selfish. If he will not emigrate for his own sake, or to spite me, tell him to come for his son. Shmuel deserves a better life than you can give him in Lemberg.

***

By the time the Levinsons finally took his money to come to America, two years later, Gershon was president of the Eldridge Street Synagogue. He paid for the bar mitzvah of any boy whose family was too poor. Yetta was head of the Women’s Charity. They brought meals to the elderly and sick, and donated household goods to engaged couples. Remembering Rivka’s resentment over the silver candlesticks, the furnishings Yetta gave newlyweds weren’t fancy, but they were clean and in good repair. She also bought each woman a hand mirror as a wedding gift.

Gershon gave his wife presents too, but they were expensive. On their fifth anniversary, he handed her a jewelled besamim, the spice box used in the Havdalah service marking the end of Shabbas. She inhaled the cinnamon, cloves, and orange peel and admired how the box’s green and blue gems sparkled in the lamplight. “I almost feel too guilty to enjoy it. We have so much and others have so little.”

“Don’t feel guilty. Feel grateful. It’s a sign of my love for you and God’s goodness to us.”

Each week Yetta made a new mixture for the besamim, blending Jewish spices with the oregano, curries, and pepper flakes used by their old neighbours. She brought the fragrant mixture and an occasional roast to the Levinsons. If Avram wasn’t home to make her return them, Rivka accepted these gifts “for the sake of the children.” Meanwhile Yetta surreptitiously looked for the candlesticks, but concluded they’d been left behind or sold in Lemberg when the Levinsons were destitute. Rivka would have hidden where the money came from, so Avram wouldn’t refuse it.

For his part, Avram hid nothing. From the moment he landed in America, until Shmuel disappeared fourteen years later, he continued to resent his brother-in-law’s help, even more than he envied his success. The one thing he could hold over Gershon was his son, named for Avram’s father, and destined to become the scholar and rabbi that Gershon in the end had not. And now that Avram’s sole advantage was gone, Gershon intended to wrest every benefit from this reversal of fortune. It was a long and lonely train ride from New York to Massachusetts, but Gershon expected that on the return trip, he would have his nephew’s company and a swift passage home.