A Blessing on the Moon (18 page)

I get out of bed, pulling the robe about my shoulders. Moving the fabric of the curtain, I peer through the window. It’s completely dark outside. Even here, in the World to Come, there is no moon, and the meager starlight is obscured tonight by a thick skein of clouds. The lights from the hotel are ablaze, but as far as I can tell, no one is stirring or moving about on either side of the lighted windows. So much for Markus’ cleaning crews working furiously through the night. I’ll have to chide him about this in the morning, over coffee and hot porridge.

The hallway is empty as well. I quietly close my door, slipping the key into the pocket of my robe, and pad down the carpeted hallway in my slippers. I stop outside Sarah and Markus’ door, rapping softly with my ring.

“Children? Sarah?” I whisper.

No one answers, but why should they? It’s four in the morning. They’re probably asleep or not yet returned from taking the steam. I’m about to turn away when I notice the thin line of light between the carpet and their door. I knock again and, again, receiving no answer, try the knob. It clicks softly.

“Hello,” I call under my breath. “Markus? Sarah? Your door is unlocked. Children, are you here?”

But the rooms are empty, the beds in furious disarray. Every light in the suite is on. The windows have been left open, and a cold wind shrills, blowing the curtains in and out of the room. I cross to secure the windows. I’m disturbed to notice that all the luggage is gone. I unfasten the doors of the wardrobes, pull out the dresser drawers. They are bare.

I hurry from their rooms to Hadassah and Naftali’s suite across the hall. It is empty as well. Neither is anyone in Mirki and Marek’s suite, nor in Edzia and Pavel’s. I’m running through the halls, like a madman, banging on doors. Every room, every suite in the long corridor has apparently been abandoned. “Hello!” I shout to no one. “Can anybody hear me?” Passing my reflection in the mirrored walls, I see a ridiculous man in a nightgown and robe running through the hallways, a cap’s tassel dancing, like a sprite, upon his head.

How long have I been sleeping?

Not knowing exactly what I’m doing, I crank the levers in the lift and feel the floor give way beneath me with a sudden lurch. Corridor after corridor rise and disappear through the lift’s meshed cage. Doors to suites have been left open, but no one is in the halls. “Jews!” I shout at every floor, unable to stop the lift. “Jews, where have you gone?”

The lobby, as well, is deserted. No one mans the front desk, the bars are closed and vacant. “Jews?” My voice pierces the emptiness uselessly, resounding off the blotchy walls, from which the murals and tapestries have disappeared. In their places are unfaded squares of paint.

The winds spit in thick gales of snow through the heavy foyer doors. I manage to shut them, pushing with my bulk against each wooden half. Behind the front desk, the Direktor’s office is locked. I pound upon the word
Private
stenciled into a small brass plate. “Herr Direktor!” I shout, but finally I have to kick it in. Inside, the bookshelves are bare and the desk drawers have nothing in them. I pick up the phone. There is no connection. “My God!” the words slip from my mouth.

Behind the front desk, I open the cash register. It contains nothing at all, no currency, no coins of any kind. The concierge’s registry book, which I searched through only this evening, is new, its pages virgin and uncut.

“Rebbe!” I shout, running through the hotel’s empty chambers.

“Ester! Children!”

My words return to me, echoing off the atrium’s curved ceilings.

I sit in the bar, slumped forward on a stool. Not even a bottle of vodka has been left behind! I try to think, but it isn’t any good. I can’t clear my head.

I cross my arms, perplexed, and am unnerved to hear, from above, a rumbling that seems to be coming from behind the scoured walls. Its scraping noises descend, growing nearer and louder.

“What’s going on?” I demand of the air. I spring behind the bar and leap upon the cupboard doors of a dumbwaiter, flinging them apart.

Inside, two lengths of rope move counterclockwise in measured intervals. I can hear the pulleys squeaking inside its chamber.

Slowly, as I watch, the box enters the cupboard, stuffed tightly with suitcases, many with colorful labels from various hotels. Several of their owners’ names, written on tags, are familiar to me as they pass before my nose.

The box drops a foot or two at a time, in a stuttered descent.

There is someone else in the hotel.

I summon up the courage to search for the servants staircase, which I find near the laundry in the far eastern wing. The stairwell is pitch black and so I hunt through the laundry room, looking for a candle or a torch. Large vats filled with trousers and scarves send up curling lines of steam, as though they had been abandoned only moments before.
Their waters are warm, the steam presses still hot. I nearly scald a hand touching their gleaming surfaces.

How easy it would be to return to my rooms, hurriedly dress and escape through the forests. This is the course a sensible man might take. A sensible man, I tell myself, would depart this queer hotel at once, hesitating only long enough to randomly choose a direction in which to flee. But the anguish of separating again from my wife and my children will not let me take that path, no matter how sensible.

I find a small candle in a medicine kit tucked away behind a furnace. Lighting it, I cross the hall and enter the servants stairwell to follow the suitcases, down to the bottom floor.

My progress is slow. The passageway is narrow and the wooden, creaking steps are crooked and positioned badly in haphazard fashion. Perhaps the builder felt that here he could scrimp on a structure no paying customer would ever see. I press my hand against the dank, pitted wall, holding the candle with the other, near to my chest. The light it gives off is negligible. I inch my feet carefully from one step to the next, uncertain of the drop. A second step may fall six inches from the first only to be followed by a ten- to twelve-inch dip. Somewhere water drips with a purling tinkle. I sense that I am underground, although
I have no proof of this other than the changing quality of sound and the dampening air.

At the edge of my small circle of light, a door appears. A heavy door, made of dented metal and painted a muted puce. Dirty handprints mar its surface, and its paint has cracked and peeled. It no longer fits snugly into its frame, if it ever did, and so cannot be locked. I place my candle on a step behind me and, pushing with my shoulder, manage to force the enormous rectangle from its frame. It creaks and groans and opens. I jump across its threshold. It bangs behind me with a thundering boom.

The place, of course, is unknown to me, but I seem to be in a back storeroom of some kind. Huge bulging sacks of flour are stacked upon pallets and piled, against the walls, nearly to the ceiling. Large mechanical mixers and big dented brass tubs lay about in broken pieces.

Perhaps it is the kitchen.

At the far end of this room, through a screened doorway, a warm light glows. How reassuring it is to hear human voices and the sounds of people working! Churning machines, banging doors, tables being pounded. Instructions are shouted over the din and several conversations are going on at once. There must be a radio, for I can hear a waltz.

I peer around the edge of the wall of flour sacks. On the other side of the screened doors, several dozen men work beneath buzzing electrical lights. Bakers, by the looks of them. Each wears a white smock
and a knotted kerchief. Puffy hats sit upon their heads, like large deflating mushrooms. At wide tables, they pound great hills of dough with their fists and flatten them out with floury pins. Half a dozen bread mixers churn and grind. A big metal oven, nearly ten feet high, stands at the back of the room, giving off an exhaustive heat. One of the bakers opens its bottom door and throws in more wood. Inside, a red fire rages and glows.

“Hans, more wood!” they call out.

“Yes, sir!”

“Quickly, quickly!”

I edge closer, bending to hide myself behind a tall breadrack, wishing I had taken time to change my clothes. Ridiculous playing the spy in a flowing nightshirt and a tasseled cap, my legs bare and freezing. These slippers are not the most dependable of shoes, and every now and again, a frosty winter breeze blows beneath my hem, chilling my buttocks.

All the bakers appear completely bald beneath their fluffy hats. A flowing mustache is the only hair each seems to have. The oldest baker barks his orders, for instance, through a thatch of white snow. The first assistants wear ribbons of grey. The intermediate men smirk beneath luxuriant black bristles as thick as horse brushes. The apprentices breathe through mouths left open below scraggly fringes of down.

“The oven is hot enough, ja?”

Using a long metal stick, an apprentice unlatches and opens the oven’s bottom doors. He feeds a fresh cord of wood into the raging fire
and checks its temperature at a circular gauge. Wiping wood chips from his hands, he nods affirmatively to his chief.

“Eins, zwei, drei, vier!” a middle baker calls out, and he and some of his fellows lift the apprentice and pretend to throw him into the fire. He kicks and struggles, but without strength, and this only makes the bakers giggle more. Finally they relent.

The head baker chuckles to himself, his eyes crinkling in delight.

“Much work, much work to do,” he sings sweetly to the rest of them, lest in their merriment they forget their chores.

The other bakers puff their cheeks and blow out sighs. “Ach!” says one, crooking an arm against a tired back. “This work …”

“Enough of your complaints,” his partner scolds. “We’re almost done already for the night.”

Not trusting the final preparation to any of his assistants, the head baker himself opens the oven’s upper doors with the long metal stick. Picking up a paint brush and a bowl of melted butter, he layers the oven’s inner shelves with a thick coat of grease.

“There will again be sweetness in the world!” he sings, pleased with the job he is making.

His assistants rush in to carefully take from him the bowl and the brush when he is through. One of the middle bakers offers him a towel and the head baker wipes his hands.

“Bring in the next batch,” he orders, chuckling to himself.

“Hansel!” one of the middle bakers calls out, and he and his fellows move towards a large pantry. “Hansel, stick your finger out so I can
see if you are fat enough!” The others respond with much jovial laughter.

The men open the pantry door, disappearing inside.

“There will again be sweetness in the world,” the head baker sings, rubbing his hands in glee.

The sweetish burning smells nauseate me. My stomach heaves into my throat. My hand slips and I lurch against a stack of precariously piled pots and pans, knocking them with a crash to the floor. The startled bakers look up from their work and with blinking eyes search in my direction. I scramble hastily to my feet.

“Madmen!” I shout, shaking my fists furiously, wanting to hit any who approach me.

“You’re late,” one of the middle bakers says, a little cross.

“Hand over your appointment card and we will begin,” the head baker demands, turning his pointed belly in my direction.

The others move towards me, rolling up their sleeves. I pick up a hooked mixing oar to fend them off.

“My family,” I say, “where are they?”

“Herr Jude,” one baker says, “don’t be such a fusspot.”

“Not another step closer or I’ll slice at least one of you!”

The mixing blade shines like a scimitar below the electric lights. I
stand my ground, holding its point in the air between us. At a loss, the many bakers turn their mustaches in the direction of the head baker, who beams jovially at me, his cheeks like two fat roses, his eyes crinkling into merry circles of delight. His walrus mustache is as white as marzipan.

“Herr Jude,” he says, a clucking laughter in his throat. “I must bake. Do you understand? Surely you don’t wish to be the only Jew left in God’s blue world?”

“Where is my family?” I say.

“Herr Jude,” he demurs.

“I demand to know!”

His clear blue eyes look warmly at me over the tops of his flour-dusted spectacles. The glass is square without supporting frames.

“Gentlemen,” he says to his staff. “Tell Herr Jude where his family is.”

“They have taken the steam,” says the first assistant.

“We have baked them,” volunteers a second assistant and there is no mistaking the pride with which he says this.

“They have been in our ovens,” says a middle baker, with equal pride.

“May we give you a guided tour?” one of the apprentices offers with a frank and open face, making all the others laugh.

I’m a risible figure, I know, in my nightshirt and my tasseled hat. Nevertheless, as they come for me, I slash out with the mixing blade, slicing one of the apprentices across the bridge of his nose, tearing at his flesh. The young boy cries out in pain, bringing his hands to his face. My efforts produce a moment’s hesitation in the advancing cohort.
With new anger, the bakers trip over the spilled pots and pans I kick in their way. I send wheeled breadracks rolling towards them and limp hurriedly down the hallway, past the high stacks of flour sacks and back out the servants door. Someone has set off an alarm, it bellows and blares. I pause long enough in the dark stairwell to slide the mixing blade through the long handle of the door, forcing it into position and preventing it from being opened from the other side. Immediately, someone in the kitchen pulls against it, pounding on its hollow metal. The mixing blade works as a jam, but there’s no telling if it will hold, nor for how long. My candle has long since burned out and I must scurry up the staircase in total darkness, holding the long hem of my nightshirt balled up in one fist so that I don’t trip over it again and again. Because of the irregularity of the stairs, I bang my shins and knees anyway. At the top of the landing, I stick my head cautiously into the corridor. The alarm is sounding even louder here, on the hotel’s second floor. Lights flash on and off. Excited shouts come from somewhere deep inside the ballrooms. Booted footsteps clatter through the hallways. Near the laundry room, I notice a small maid’s pantry. The door, cut into the wall, must be no more than two and a half feet in height. From the stairwell, I hear that the bakers have broken through my temporary jam and are now ascending the stairs. Their jovial threats, which they bark out in a teasing, pleasant way, echo through the chamber. With both retreat and advance cut off, I open the small maid’s pantry and conceal myself behind a rickety fence of broom and mop handles, pulling the door to from the inside. There is no inner
knob, only the quarter inch of screw that fastens the knob to the other side of the door’s thin wood. The pantry is small. There is no way for me to get comfortable. I half lie atop water buckets and detergent bottles, terror filling my body with an electric pulse. Outside, the drumming of footsteps and a tangled chorus of voices pass my door at intervals. Whose voices and whose steps, I can in no way discern. Because, at some point, the sounds grow fainter and more distant, I assume my ruse has worked. Still, I daren’t move or even attempt to shift my body, lest some slight sound reveal my whereabouts. A small duster has been poking me in the spine. One leg and an elbow tingle and grow numb. My mouth is dry and I am barely able to suppress the cough that is beginning at the bottom of my throat. The darkness, too, is intolerable. I wave my hand before my eyes, but can see nothing. My neck aches and when I move it, it pops audibly. If they’ve stationed some watchman or guard in the hall, the sounds from my neck would probably be indistinguishable from the creaking of the hotel walls. Perhaps he begins to slumber, this guard, nearly as uncomfortable as I am. Perhaps he misses his bed. Perhaps he misses his wife and children. His feet grow numb and his mind begins to wander. He’d rather be farming. His cows need milking. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing, sitting here in an empty hotel, waiting for me to cross his path so he can shoot me and go home. I might as well let him. How long can I continue to hide in this way, folded in half, inside this little pantry? If I turn myself in, it would be from sheer boredom. I laugh at the idea, forgetting to stifle it. There’s no telling the time. Could it possibly be
morning? I imagine I hear birds singing. Surely it is morning. I can’t hide forever. I’m only human. It would be different if I had a friend or a helper on the outside, someone who knew where I was, someone who brought me food or scraps of information, someone who could whistle a secret tune when it was safe to venture out. The man who is watching me, this watcher who I have thought about throughout this long night, perhaps he is a man whose secret sympathies lie with me. One can never tell. Perhaps he has been thinking of me as well at his station, during his long vigil. Maybe I could charm him into aiding me. Perhaps he will hide me in his barn, send his children out to me with food. They will cover me with hay if the soldiers come. At any rate, I’m suffocating in this little closet. I need to move. I cannot take it any longer. “All right, all right!” I shout. “Enough! I will surrender!” And with one foot, I kick open the cupboard door. The air rushes in. I am blinded by an intense glare.