17

RAFAEL WAITED FOR THE CAWING BIRDS TO SETTLE. HE SEEMED PERPLEXED by Nathan’s question.”Itzik never told you why he left Poland?”

Nathan shrugged. “I always thought it was because he wanted a better life.” He ran his fingers through his hair, searching for more of an answer. “My father said he’d been like a slave here, that he’d worked sixteen hours a day.”

“Ptuh! That had nothing to do with it. He left because of Jan Nowak.”

Nathan was aghast. “You mean to tell me there really was a Jan Nowak?”

Rafael narrowed his eyes, assessing the effect the name Jan Nowak had had. “Yeh, Leiber, those stories I told you don’t lie. There was a Jan Nowak in our town. The night your father left us, Jan and his wife were in their wagon, on the road where your driver is parked.” Rafael indicated the entrance of the cemetery with his head.

“They saw three of our kinderlach on their way home from cheder, and Jan started in with that crazy laugh of his. The children were so afraid of him they didn’t move. Then it was too late to run. He brought the whip down on their feet to make them jump. His wife yelled he should do it faster, and he did, laughing with the blows, I tell you.”

He shook his head with a heavy sadness that made Nathan wonder why in the world this man had remained in Zokof.

“Your father was coming home at that time, and he saw what Jan Nowak was doing to those children. He ran to the wagon, grabbed Jan by the arm—a chutzpah for a skinny stick of a boy when the peasant was two heads taller than him and strong as an ox.”

Nathan flushed, surprised and impressed that daring had once accompanied Pop’s rage. “How can you know that this happened? What proof is there?”

Rafael raised his palms upward and shook them meaningfully. “I know what I know. It’s not often that God intervenes in the lives of men, Leiber. But that night, God intervened. Jan Nowak slipped on a handful of grass and fell from his wagon. His horse went meshuggeh. That’s what killed him. The wagon rolled over his head.”

Nathan could not think of a way he could combat Rafael’s certainty. Instead, he became alarmed. “But the man’s death was an accident, wasn’t it? No one could accuse my father of murder.”

“Ptuh! This is Poland, Leiber! In Poland, a Jew who gets caught in such a business, they call a murderer.”

Horrified, Nathan tried to imagine the scene. “What about the children?”

“The youngest one recognized your father. He called out, ‘It’s Itzik Leiber!’ A terrible mistake. Terrible!” Rafael grimaced. “The wife heard. ‘Itzik Leiber is the devil himself!’ she shouted. What could Itzik do? The Poles would come after him now, not the children. All three kinderlach were holding tight to his legs. ‘Run home safe,’ he told them. But they wouldn’t let go of him. The wife took hold of Jan’s whip. No one waited for the blows. The children ran. Itzik ran. He jumped over the cemetery wall.”

Nathan looked around for a wall, trying to imagine his slow, round Pop jumping over it like a hunted animal. But except for the remnant on which Rafael had sat, there was no wall.

“He crawled on all fours over the graves, until he came to Freidl’s resting place over there.” Rafael pointed. “What made him stop, I’m sure he himself couldn’t have said. He wrapped himself around her gravestone like he was trying to climb into her arms.”

Nathan looked at the pile of stones to which Rafael pointed, intrigued but skeptical. “Couldn’t he just have been out of breath and didn’t know where else to go?”

“Exactly, Leiber. Out of breath,” Rafael commended him, although Nathan didn’t know why.

Rafael placed his hands on his knees, much as Nathan himself placed his hands on a lectern. “In the Torah,” he began, “the word breath is connected with the soul, with God Himself.” He smiled. “You are right. You could say he was out of soul, out of God, when he came to Freidl. He didn’t know where to go. So he stopped.”

Nathan recognized the teacher in Rafael appealing to him. But he couldn’t grasp what he was being expected to learn.

Rafael pouted slightly. “I will admit, it was not such a wonder that her stone fell over when Itzik put his arms around it. A stone, newly unveiled and not so steady in the earth. Of course it fell. Broke in two pieces, as I said.”

Nathan fought not to show his disbelief. “Are you telling me the broken stone is a historical fact?”

“That’s right.” Rafael nodded with satisfaction. “After it broke, the Poles ran from the cemetery. Who knows, maybe they saw a ghost?” His eyes widened with mock amazement, and his laugh was deep, gravelly as his voice, but oddly pleasing.

Nathan smiled, reassured that Rafael’s metaphysical beliefs had limits.

“Later, Itzik crept like a thief back to town. He went to the house of his employer, a rich miller who bought wheat from Jan Nowak. Avrum Kollek was his name.” Rafael shook his head. “Avrum Kollek made your father beg for every zloty he gave him. As if it weren’t a sin to shame the poor.”

Nathan took the studio photograph from his jacket, of his father as a boy. He tried to imagine all this. Begging took a willingness to be vulnerable, an attitude wholly absent in Pop’s familiar defiant expression. Only fear for his family could have made him bend so far against his nature. He looked down at his feet, ashamed for Pop.

A horn blasted twice from outside the cemetery. A moment later, it blasted again, then again.

Rafael looked over in the general direction of the noise. “It is your driver. He wants to go.”

“Well, he’ll have to wait. I’m not ready to go yet.” Nathan was surprised at his own vehemence. They waited for the horn to stop. He could not get it out of his mind that Pop had really crawled on all fours in this cemetery. “You said he begged for money?”

“For his mother, Sarah,” Rafael nodded. “Sarah, mother of Itzik. Strange, no? Another Sarah. Another Itzik. Another sacrificial lamb. Poor woman, half dead already from hunger and overwork. And because of what happened that night, she had to leave Zokof too.”

“With him?”

“No.”

“He left alone?”

Rafael nodded. By then, Nathan’s shoulder muscles were knotted so tightly they were causing him the kind of pain only Marion’s massages could undo. He was gripped by the thought of his father losing his home and his family at the age of fourteen.

Rafael looked toward the car. Nathan looked at the old man’s worn shoes and realized that he needed the ride back to town. He stood up. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“Nah. He’ll wait,” Rafael said brusquely. He picked up a dead leaf and rolled it gently between his fingers. “Sarah left Zokof at dawn. By then, her other children were in danger. In those days, Leiber, Poland wasn’t so bad as Russia. They didn’t push Jews into a Pale of Settlement and let them starve to death. But it was bad enough. It wasn’t safe for her to stay.”

Why the hell didn’t Pop tell me any of this? Nathan wondered. He rolled his shoulders, trying to stretch his tight back muscles. “What about his employer, the miller? Couldn’t he have done something?” he asked irritably.

“I’m coming to that. After he sent Itzik off, Avrum Kollek went to the Russian magistrate and offered him gold, that he should protect the Jews of Zokof. But there were sensitive matters involved with a local nobleman, and the Russian refused to send a detachment of soldiers. The Poles knew what that meant. They made a pogrom like the Jews hadn’t seen for years. For his trouble, Avrum Kollek himself fell under their boots. It took five men at least to hold him down while they pulled out his beard, tied him up like a chicken, and put a trayf sausage in his mouth. They hung him, in front of his daughter, Shuli. Ach! The things that were done here, you don’t know. You can’t imagine.”

Nathan got nauseous. “Did my father know what happened?”

“Nah, not until later. He heard there was trouble when he was already in Radom. How many details he got, I don’t know. All night he’d been walking, hiding in ditches along the road, sleeping through the morning with his head on the bundle his mother, may she rest in peace, packed for him. In his pocket he had a red ribbon his sister Hindeleh gave him from her hair.”

This last bit of information startled Nathan. “I found a ribbon in the strongbox where my father kept all his important papers. It was tied around the photograph I just showed you. It was more pink than red. It must have faded. How did you know about that ribbon? How do you know about any of this?”

“There are things I know, Leiber. Let’s leave it like that, for now,” Rafael said.

Overcome, and still grateful for all this information, Nathan was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, for now. “How old was Pop’s sister Hindeleh?” he asked.

“Four. A little beauty. Thick red curls. And her face, a perfect oval. Light-brown eyes.”

“A Modigliani girl.” Nathan blurted one of his pet names for his Ellen.

Rafael shrugged. “The only Leiber who returned to Zokof after the pogrom was Gershom, the eldest boy. But that was years later.”

Nathan stared, literally open-mouthed, at Rafael. “Did you know my father’s brother?”

“Of course I knew him. A sickly man. A bachelor. He showed up around 1930 and went to work for Chaim the Baker’s son. Kept to himself. Slept on the flour sacks at the bakery. Spent all his spare time in shul, though his beard was always covered with flour. The families took turns inviting him to Shabbos dinner.”

This wasn’t enough for Nathan. “What else do you remember about him?”

Rafael brushed a fallen leaf from his shoulder. “It is written, the less a man talks, the nearer he is to holiness. If so, your uncle Gershom was a holy man.” He raised his bushy eyebrows ironically. “He was the last Jewish baker in Zokof. Bread like his will never be made again here—pumpernickel, rye.... Oy, for a taste of one of Gershom’s challahs. The Poles don’t know from making egg bread.”

Nathan vowed he’d find a way to get Rafael a challah. “My father used to say no one in America knows how to make bread either.”

Rafael smiled. A squirrel chattered and scampered through the underbrush.

“You were saying, about Gershom?” Nathan prompted.

“From Gershom we learned what happened to Itzik Leiber’s family.”

“So Gershom was the one who told you what happened to my father that night?” This made sense to Nathan, and he was relieved at the logical explanation.

“Nah, from Gershom I know what happened to Itzik’s family. They went through forests and towns. They hid from the authorities who were looking for Itzik. In Lublin, he said, they went to the Old Cemetery, the one that’s high on the hill. They pushed kvitls under stones around the Seer of Lublin’s grave. You’ve heard of him, maybe. They called him ‘the Iron Head.’”

Nathan shook his head, no.

“They called him that because he had the Gemara, the whole thing, in his head, like an encyclopedia. Gershom wrote the kvitls on thin slips of paper he found along the road, all their prayers for Itzik’s safety, for some shelter and food. About this, he was poetic. He said the kvitls fluttered like butterfly wings until the rain came and pinned them down, erasing the letters drop by drop.”

Rafael looked at the sky. “Many times I myself have wondered, does God read these messages? If He does, how could He have been so indifferent to the fate of this poor woman and her children? And what of the Seer of Lublin? Even with those famous eyes—they say he had one much bigger than the other, and that they saw through time and space—did they see Sarah Leiber?” He shook his head. “She wandered east toward Chelm and died of a fever.”

Nathan shrank inside. “My grandmother died on the road?”

Rafael nodded.

“What happened to Hindeleh?”

“Taken to a Jewish orphanage in Chelm.”

Nathan tore at the bark of the tree. “What about the other children?”

“As it is written, they were scattered like straw that flies before the wind.”

Even in his anguish, Nathan was taken with the poetic phrase and wondered if it was biblical. “Did any of them come back to Zokof after the war?” he asked.

“Nah. The war swept us all away from here. They didn’t come back.”

Nathan looked at the photograph of his father again and wondered what had happened to Hindeleh. How could it be that a faded hair ribbon was all that was left of a person, that it could remain intact years after she had disappeared? It was enough to make a man regard faith in a Supreme Eye on the world as something too painful to share with his children. Maybe that’s what Pop had thought. Nathan imagined him alone in his window, silent except when he talked back to the radio, silent as he read his socialist newspaper. Not like his holy brother Gershom. Just silent because that was all he had to say about God.

He ached for his father now, ached that they’d lost their chance to speak plainly with each other about Zokof, just as he’d ached for years that he couldn’t apologize to him for having made such a travesty of his funeral service. It turned his stomach to think of it.

Rafael stood up. “Come. It’s time to pray.”

Nathan looked around the unmarked cemetery. “I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know what is really even meant by God,” he said, surprised that he was ashamed to admit this. “After my father died, I never even visited his grave because I didn’t know what I’d do when I got there. Is that a sin?”

“What do you think?”

“I thought it wouldn’t make a difference to him anymore, if I came or not. He was gone.”

“But it made a difference to you. Why does a man pray, Leiber? To ask God to produce presents for him like a magician, or that He should grant wishes? This is for children!”

Nathan was impressed.

“A man prays so he can speak to his own still small voice. He prays to make himself change. In the beginning, the words mean nothing. Imagine a boy in the back of a shul, without a prayer book, reciting the Hebrew alphabet. When asked why, he says, ‘I don’t know how to pray, so I’m offering God the letters. I hope He will arrange the words.’”

The parable appealed to Nathan as an academic, and he smiled appreciatively.

“A man who spends his life working at those letters can learn to arrange the words himself. And if he needs help, he turns to the prayers of his fathers and they become a minyan, reciting as one voice across centuries.”

“And what if he doesn’t believe in the words?”

“Then he asks God for help—like your father, that night in the cemetery.”

Nathan quickly took issue with this. “My father didn’t believe in prayers. He didn’t believe in God.”

“Listen to me, Leiber. Your father believed. He lit a holy spark inside himself in this cemetery, the spark of man touching God. It was nothing less than that. Understand?”

“With all due respect,” Nathan insisted, “what you call a holy spark is what I would call a moment of inspiration. There’s no need for God in the picture.”

Rafael smiled indulgently. “Inspiration without understanding to sustain it lasts as long as a bubble of soap. The understanding that lasts is when a man realizes God’s presence in the world. A man who is touched by such understanding is changed, not for an hour or a day, but for a lifetime. He has crossed the bridge to what we call having the proper kavonah—paying attention to the meaning and the direction of one’s prayer.”

“I’m not sure I’d ever be constitutionally able to recognize the presence of God,” Nathan said, in his most professorial manner. “It goes against my whole rationalist orientation toward life. Awe at natural beauty is about as far as I go.”

“So, maybe for you it will be more difficult. So?”

“So, if I pray, I guarantee you it will be gibberish to me today and gibberish ten years from today, no matter how many times I say the words. To me, the prayers will always just be words, conversations with myself, at best. But there’s no God in that.”

Rafael smiled again. “And you are so sure that nothing could ever change your orientation, as you call it? You are the measure of all things and you are immovable? I can only say, if this is so, Leiber, then you have a problem bigger than not being able to pray. You live in a very small world that allows only for small wonders.”

Nathan hesitated before answering. How could a man so immersed in his religion as Rafael understand him? “I just don’t need to put a God in the picture to explain life, much less to thank Him for it.”

“The rabbis say a man who takes the fruits of the world but offers no thanks is a thief.”

“The rabbis have a vested interest in making sure people keep believing in God.”

Rafael laughed. “You sound like your father.”

“I learned from a master.” Nathan smiled back.

“A master of forgetfulness.”

Nathan stopped smiling. “What does forgetfulness have to do with believing in God?”

“Your father had the right kavonah that night he was here. It had nothing to do with those rabbis he hated so much. I’ll tell you something you don’t know. Your father loved God—he’d felt His breath. He knew how to pray. But praying from the heart takes a lot out of a man, especially when his heart is heavy. When Itzik found an excuse not to pray, he stopped.”

“What excuse?”

“Socialism.”

Nathan knew in his gut there was something to what Rafael was saying. After all, Pop had used socialism as an excuse not to do a lot of things. “I can’t change what my father did,” he said dejectedly.

“Yes, you can. It is almost enough for us that you returned here, after so many years. Now, be a Jew and learn to pray.”

Nathan’s ears burned at being put on the spot. But the thought of praying excited him in a way. What had he lost, he wondered, when the chain of generations had been broken, the yarmulkes and the identifying Jewish names removed, all so that he and his family could hide like chameleons among the Gentiles? Was that really all his father’s socialist Utopia had been for, to hide from a demanding God because the enlightened world had allowed it? Or were he and Pop just trying to buy a little peace from the boots of the bullies and the butts of their guns? What kind of people hand their legacy over to their enemies for a fairy tale? Socialism. He was depressed by his questions. He was becoming tired, and the crows were getting on his nerves.

“We’ll stand by Freidl’s grave,” Rafael said. “You can pray for her soul. We can say a special blessing to thank God for saving Itzik from imminent danger in this place. There is a special prayer for this.” Rafael took a few steps. The heel of his shoe caught on a root and he stumbled. Nathan sprang forward and caught him in his arms. He’d had a similar incident with Pop losing his balance once, at the Adirondacks cabin. “You need some fresh air in your lungs,” he’d told Pop, trying to persuade him to leave his newspaper and take a walk.

“What do I need with fresh air?” Pop had said. “I got all the air I need in here.”

The road outside the cabin, rutted and lined with pine needles, was one of the things Nathan liked best about the Adirondacks property. But he and Pop hadn’t gone twenty feet when Pop twisted his ankle. Nathan couldn’t catch him in time to break the fall.

“What kind of place is this where they don’t know how to put cement on a road? Feh, it’s like Poland!” Pop had spat, his soft, doughy body defying all Nathan’s efforts to lift him.

Nathan released Rafael and helped steady him.

“Thanks, Leiber.” He chuckled. “The roots here. I got caught in your roots. Heh!”

Nathan smiled. He was moved enough by what had passed between them to follow Rafael to Freidl’s grave. All right, he thought, I’ll try to do what he wants, for his sake. Their coats swayed gently in tandem as they walked the short distance, hands clasped behind their backs. “Shouldn’t we be wearing prayer shawls?” he asked.

“Not here. We don’t wear them, out of respect for the dead, who can no longer join us in prayer.”

When they reached the foot-high pile of small stones, Nathan felt a bit sheepish. “What was the name again of that prayer you recite?”

“El Molei Rachamim.”

“Can I say it for all the Leibers that are buried here?”

“One person at a time, Leiber. This isn’t a party.”

“But I told you, I don’t know their names.”

Perhaps the upset in Nathan’s voice persuaded Rafael to back down. “All right, so if you don’t know the names, then say it for the family. God will survive it, I’m sure.” He did his customary shrug. “But if you’re going to say El Molei, you should at least understand what you’re saying.”

Nathan nodded gratefully.

“It means, God of mercy, You who dwell on high, may the souls of our loved ones find perfect rest beneath the wings of Your divine presence. And we say, Amen.”

“It’s only the God part I have trouble with,” Nathan said.

“That’s not trouble, that’s a beginning. Say the words with me, Leiber. Bring them into your heart.” He closed his eyes.

This is craziness, Nathan thought, even though he’d always secretly admired the elder statesmen of the faith, the way they proudly recited the anthems of their nation. They were men of undeniable power. Lou Gersh, Pop’s card partner, was one of them. Who could forget him at Pop’s funeral as he’d stepped forward, without warning, and broken the awkward vacuum by saying Kaddish. The mourners had gazed at Lou with gratitude they had not shown Nathan when he’d delivered his eulogy. He had stared at the memorial booklet, embarrassed that he was unable to follow even the transliteration of a prayer he knew was knit into his father’s heart.

After the service, Lou had put his arms around him and patted him on the back. “Don’t worry about it, Nathan,” he’d said. “You made your father proud when it mattered, when he was alive.” But Nathan was not convinced. He’d felt more distanced from Pop than ever.

A crow cawed directly above. Nathan and Rafael stood shoulder to shoulder, their heads bowed before the jumble of unremarkable stones that marked Freidl’s grave. Nathan rubbed his eyes under his glasses. As a younger man, he’d held on to the hope that one day he could become someone who experienced life more fully. God knows, he’d never had a talent for letting go of himself. Every time he’d tried, it had ended badly. There was that time he’d jumped off the rock ledge at the Adirondacks lake, hoping against hope that he’d fall harmlessly into the water below. He’d gotten seventeen stitches in the back of the head for his trouble, and the keloid would always remind him that he was a bound man, a man who toppled over into undignified states whenever he tried to break free.

He ran his fingers once again over the keloid scar, ashamed and disgusted at himself. But before he could work himself over with further self recrimination, he remembered Rafael’s admonition not to sacrifice to the idols. He commanded himself to stop worrying what the whole damn world would think of him if he prayed out loud for the boy who’d once crawled on all fours in this cemetery—his father, Itzik the Faithless One. He’d pray, damn it, not to let go for himself, but for his family buried here, because he’d never done it for Pop.

“El Molei Rachamim,” Rafael said. He signaled Nathan to repeat after him.

“El Molei Rachamim,” Nathan whispered, praying for brevity and the strength to go the distance.

“Shochain ba’m’romim, hamtzai m’nucha n’chona tachas canfai Ha’Sh’cheenah.” Nathan repeated the Hebrew, phrase by painful phrase, methodically forcing himself to ignore his skepticism about what he was doing. The tactic proved successful. After four or five repetitions, he began to feel oddly enfolded by the rhythm of the words, immersed, carried away by them.

“...sh’ha-lach l’o lo mo...” A wave of images came to him. Pop reading Hebrew at the Seder table, Ellen and her cousins listening to him, entranced. His mother in the kitchen serving the matzo ball soup, her ankles and feet puffed up like a souffl?. There they were. The Leibers.

“...b’Gan Edan t’heh m’nu-cho-so...” With each repetition, his voice grew more steady and his eyes met Rafael’s less often, until he realized that Rafael had closed his eyes and begun to sway, returning to correct Nathan only when he stumbled, repeating and repeating the phrases patiently until he got it right, nodding, moving on, guiding him gently aloft.

“...v’yitz-ror bitz-ror ha’cha-yim es nish-mo-so...,” Rafael chanted. Something about the phrase sounded familiar to Nathan, reawoke images of his Bar Mitzvah, his childhood, of that long ago time of stoops and stickball.

“...v’ya-nu-ach b’sholem al mish-ka-vo...” Nathan’s voice caught. For the first time in years, he felt that heat behind the eyes that precedes tears. They came, slowly at first, then spilled over the rims of his lower lids, blurring his vision, washing down over his cheeks and emptying into his mouth, salty as seawater. Like Pop at the Seder table, he realized at once. And in that moment, he understood the power of prayer, that it linked the man with his community and tunneled deep into his hidden self. He understood how even a Jewish socialist could not resist it, could not forget that despite everything he was a Jew first, even if he could not admit it to his son. So there in the Zokof Cemetery, standing over the unmarked bones of his ancestors, Nathan acknowledged it for them both, at last. “...v’nomar, amen.”

From your lips to God’s ear, Nathan, son of Itzik. Amen.