MY MOTHER LOVES NOTHING MORE than to clip articles from the newspaper and send them to her daughters in the mail. Flood insurance, flu immunization, the dangers of eating tomatoes from a tin: they are notes of caution, dispatches of disaster narrowly averted. When I open today’s mail, I find an article about the photography exhibit at McMaster University, Roman Vishniac: A Vanished World. Its subject is Eastern European Jews in 1938 and 1939.
Mum has included a short note: “Do you want to go?”
It takes us several weeks to arrange a time that works for her, Dad and me. On the way there we stop in at Mum’s parents’ house in Hamilton. My Martin grandparents are both ninety years old, and have been married for sixty-six years. I give them a copy of my new book, The Dream World; I’ve dedicated it to them. Poetry is foreign to them, but they are pleased, I think, by the tribute.
In some ways I belong to the Martins, to our raucous and spirited family gatherings. My Martin cousins Lindsay and Heather were two of my best friends growing up. Still, as I sip tea and help Gramps with his puzzle, I wonder again about my general lack of interest—at least in terms of my own creative work—in this side of the family. It is not for lack of stories: my great-great-great-great-grandfather on the Martin side was the founder of the modern-day Humane Society. He was known as “Humanity Dick”—a nickname bestowed by his friend King George IV. Humanity Dick’s life included all manner of intrigue: political office, romantic scandals, shipwrecks. A new biography has been written about him; I have not even made the time to read it. Gramps lent me his copy and I return it now, sheepish, with nothing to say.
The Vishniac exhibition is smaller than I’d expected. The photos show Hasidic Jews, rabbis with long beards and tefillin strapped to their foreheads. The children look raggedy and hungry. Dad calls me over to a picture of a skinny man with a box of wares displayed at his feet.
“This was us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Four generations ago your Bondy ancestors were peddlers. And on the Pick side, three generations ago.”
“Really?”
He nods. “These are our genes,” he says, pointing at the photos. “The genes that make me a go-getter. Proactive, resourceful, successful.”
Perhaps because of the secrecy he grew up with, Dad is acutely attuned to antisemitism, to any sort of stereotype or generalization about his people. Now, though, he says, “If you want to talk about race, well, each race develops traits. The Jews were cheap—because they had to be!”
Uneasy with this line of thinking, I change the topic. “Do you think it would have been important to Gumper to marry a Jew?” I ask.
“Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
“Yes,” Dad says. “Of course.”
I hear Mum behind us, facing one of the photos, humming the same three notes in rapid succession.
“And you, his son? Did Gumper want you to marry a Jew?”
“Of course not!”
So I’m not wrong in being a little confused.
“And he wouldn’t have wanted you to get married under a chuppah,” Dad says. He pauses. “And neither do I. If you want my opinion.”
I swallow. Digging around in my bag, I pull out a book I have recently read, a graphic memoir called I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors by Bernice Eisenstein. I show Dad the opening quote, from Deuteronomy. “It’s powerful, isn’t it?” I ask.
He reads the quote aloud: “ ‘Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children, and your children’s children.’ ”
I watch his face: it’s slack. I notice that his hair, which I used to think of as grey, has now turned predominantly white.
“So?” I prompt.
“It’s powerful,” he concedes. “But I don’t see what it has to do with me.”
I take a deep breath. The connection is so obvious that I’m at a loss even to articulate it. I venture, “I don’t quite buy Gumper’s transformation. Is it possible for anyone to change so deeply? How could the man who said he wouldn’t convert if he were the last Jew on earth suddenly make such a radical shift?”
“The historical context was powerful,” Dad says.
“Yes. But there must have been a part of him that longed, a little part, well hidden away.”
But Dad won’t give an inch.