Chapter 32

Gershon wandered aimlessly through the rooms of the Mendels’ apartment. He couldn’t imagine how the Jews had held on for forty years in the desert, not knowing what was to become of them. Yetta urged him to take a walk, open a book, visit the synagogue, anything to make him less dershlogn. A few days later she announced that she’d gotten tickets to the Thalia for the following night.

“I’m in no mood for the theatre, especially the vaudeville schlock those greenhorns like.” Gershon slumped at the dining room table, staring into a cup of cold tea.

“Since when did you get so fancy shmancy?” Yetta cocked an eyebrow, but promised him the plays would be good, an Isaac Dov Berkowitz original and two Sholem Aleichem translations.

Gershon frowned. “Who needs a reminder of shtetl life? I came here to escape that.”

“A reminder is just what you need to see how good a life you made in this country. A bissel fun, like they say here, is what Mr. Doctor ordered.” She plunked the tickets on the table.

He counted them. Five. That meant both girls were coming. Gershon squirmed, having barely spoken to Ruchel since the parade. But why was there an extra ticket? For a minute, he panicked that in her desire make peace in the family, his wife had asked Avram to join them. Unlikely as it was that Avram would have accepted, suppose he had just to annoy Gershon?

“Ruchel invited Dev,” Yetta explained. “It’s dark like a tomb at your sister’s. A fourteen-year-old girl needs a bissel fun too. Besides, you know how star-struck our niece is.” Gershon didn’t, but he was so relieved Avram wasn’t coming that he asked for a fresh cup of tea.

The next evening, he looked with satisfaction at the high class of people in the lobby. Dev ogled the six-foot chandeliers, which she pronounced the cat’s meow. It was hard to maintain a sour mood in her presence. Gershon realized it was her first experience with live theatre. Avram insisted he couldn’t afford it whenever Yetta suggested the Levinsons join them, and he wouldn’t let the Mendels buy them tickets. Before Shmuel disappeared, Rivka would have been tempted, but her desire for entertainment vanished with her son. Ruchel was right to think her cousin needed a break from that depressed household. He hoped Avram knew he was paying for it.

Yetta herded everyone to the refreshment bar for coffee and Danish. While she talked to Zipporah about the shadchen’s renewed efforts to find her a husband now that suitable men were home from the war, Gershon eavesdropped on Ruchel and Dev. “... highest grade in biology,” his niece was saying, “but I’m afraid to tell Papa. He’ll pitch an ing-bing if I mention college.”

Ruchel snorted. “No grown-up will take your college plans seriously if you don’t stop using childish slang. What about Aunt Rivka?”

“Mama used to be excited about my going to college to study science.” Dev sipped the coffee, another first for her, Gershon guessed. She added three more teaspoons of sugar.

“And now?”

Dev’s eyes teared. “She never talks about it anymore. She’s too grummy, I mean depressed, over Shmuel.”

“Your father should be proud that you want to do medical research.” Ruchel spoke firmly. “Jews are commanded to do tikkun olam, world healing. You could fulfil that commandment by discovering a cure for some horrible disease, like the Spanish flu.”

“If Papa thinks of me at all, it’s to marry me off.” Dev looked guiltily at Zipporah. So did Gershon, but his older daughter and wife were too busy with wedding plans to have heard her.

“Our parents came here to give us a better life,” Ruchel told Dev. Gershon smiled to hear her give him that credit. “I know Uncle Avram’s heartbroken about Shmuel, but he still has you.”

Dev pressed her lips together. “Your father worships America as the land of opportunity, but mine would have been just as happy if my brother was a respected rabbi in Lemberg.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s given up on the future.”

Gershon felt a rare pang of sympathy. Failing to find Shmuel had also robbed him of hope. He used to feel that the ner tamid, the eternal light inside the synagogue, burned within him too. No longer. Yet he swore he wouldn’t turn into another Avram. He’d tell Dev not to give up either.

Ruchel squeezed Dev’s shoulder. “Don’t let your father hold you back.” Though Ruchel’s back was to him, Gershon sensed her remark was addressed to him as much as to her cousin. The pleasure he’d felt a moment ago when Ruchel acknowledged his good intentions evaporated.

“That’s hotsy-totsy advice. Sorry.” Dev smiled and gulped down the rest of her coffee.

Gershon set his uneaten pastry on the bar and sidled over to Yetta and Zipporah, who peppered him with questions about which prospective son-in-law he favoured. Their trust in him restored a glimmer of self-confidence, but he still felt shaky, even when Yetta handed him the tickets to lead the women into the auditorium. He sat on the aisle, listening to their chatter. Dev’s excitement was again infectious. When the curtain rose, he willed himself to forget his troubles. Yetta was right. He needed distraction, not only from his nephew, but from his younger daughter.

Berkowitz’s play The Townsmen began. The tenement scene resembled the Mendels’ first apartment on the Lower East Side and could double for the two cramped rooms the Levinsons lived in today. Dev’s sigh of disappointment was audible. No doubt she expected to see on the stage a world as fantastic as the one she’d swooned over in the lobby. The dismal sight, recalling the humiliations of his childhood poverty, shattered Gershon’s resolve to enjoy himself too. Two characters, an older immigrant and a newcomer, took centre stage. The audience laughed as the greenhorn uttered familiar worries: people here talked too fast, walking on pavement made him stumble like a shikker, the roar of the subway was scarier than an army of drunken Cossacks descending on their village. Here was no better than there. The Christians still held all the power.

“Not to worry!” the old-timer said. “In America, we Jews run the show!” At that line, everyone guffawed. Even Dev squealed with delight. Gershon sat stone-faced. Two years ago, he’d have recognized himself and laughed too. He missed being the man who once helped people find jobs and housing. Now he couldn’t find a missing boy. His eyes settled on the floor, where they remained for the rest of the performance. By not looking at the stage, he could blot out memories of the shtetl, but he couldn’t shake the sting of failure today. Acid from the two sips of coffee he’d had in the lobby crept up Gershon’s gullet and blistered his throat.

After the curtain fell, he ushered the women out quickly, eager to end the evening and escape into sleep. Dev slipped behind the others to walk beside him. “What’s eating you Onkel Gershon? Ruchel called you a wet blanket tonight, but you’re sad all the time, like my mother. You hardly visit us anymore.” Gershon stiffened, but Dev, still exhilarated by the play, seemed to feel no inhibition about talking to him so frankly. “It’s because of not finding Shmuel, isn’t it?”

He stopped, rooted to the pavement. Yetta and the girls were half a block ahead, too far away to hear. Still, Gershon couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes and nodded.

“Don’t give up hope,” Dev said. “Don’t make my father right. You’re still the big cheese. You run the show.” She kissed his cheek and skipped to catch up with her aunt and cousins.

Gershon picked up his own pace. Some people said that as Catholics like Stepanic gained power, life would get better for the Jews too. He didn’t agree. On the other hand, Stepanic might relish succeeding where Gershon had failed. And if his enemy did succeed in finding Shmuel, Gershon would win too. Maybe having Catholics in power wouldn’t be so bad for Jews after all.

***

Two weeks later, Gershon let himself feel optimistic when Stepanic invited him to his office. He accepted coffee and a china plate of bow knot chrusciki, although he was too excited to sit in the overstuffed chair he was offered. Stepanic’s slimy lips were arranged in an almost-warm smile.

“I didn’t expect you to call me so soon,” Gershon admitted.

Stepanic leaned back and lit a cigar. He held out the box, but closed the lid with a loud thwack as Gershon reached to take one. “Shall I get right to the news?”

The cup and plate rattled in Gershon’s hands. He set them on the edge of the desk.

Stepanic unfolded a sheet of embossed stationery and began reading. “With regard to your first inquiry, we regret to inform you that there is no record of the aforementioned Shmuel Levinson having enlisted in the service of the Navy in 1917, nor at any date prior or thereafter.”

Gershon already knew that. He waved his hand impatiently.

“With regard to your second inquiry,” Stepanic continued, “our files indicate that all the personnel trained at the Naval Militia School in East Boston were deployed in Great Britain or along the coast of France until the termination of hostilities on the Western Front. Those who did not perish have since been recalled to the United States. Only those shipped to the Mediterranean from other training facilities were reassigned to the Eastern Front pending a second armistice.”

Although Stepanic read on, all Gershon heard was an occasional phrase — unidentified servicemen, buried at sea, condolences to the family on whose behalf this inquiry was made. Stepanic’s lips curled in a gleeful grin, and he licked them repeatedly until they glistened with spittle. When he at last finished, he folded the letter and pointed again to the chair.

This time Gershon sat. “There must be some higher office you can write.”

“The War Department is as high as it goes.”

Gershon held out his hand for the letter.

“You don’t believe me, Mr. Mendel?” Stepanic thrust the document in front of Gershon’s face and poked a stubby finger at the raised seal. Unlike the form letters Gershon had received the last two years, this one, addressed to Stepanic, was signed by hand. “Your nephew’s ship was attacked by a U-boat. He’s lying on the bottom of the ocean. Face it. Your search is over.”

The room was spinning. Gershon tried to steady himself by focusing on the toes of his shoes, which Yetta had polished last night. The reflection of his stunned face made him dizzier. Stepanic held out the cigar box again, this time leaving it open, and asked if there was anything else he could do to help. Gershon slammed down the lid and lurched outside into the fetid air.

In a daze, he walked to the Eldridge Street Synagogue and rested his palms on the ornate carved doors. Was this how Jacob felt after his sons reported that his beloved child, Joseph, had been killed by wild beasts? “Why does everything happen to me?” the Hebrew patriarch had cried. Gershon tore his lapel. It was a sign of mourning reserved for parents, children, and siblings of the deceased, but was he not as bereft as Avram, the boy’s father? He walked through the doors and paused at the threshold of the sanctuary, raising his eyes to the ark where the silk-wrapped Torah scrolls sat behind the bima. Then he turned and left. There was no point in praying now. What could he say to God other than curses?