Coney (23 page)

“Klutz,” Velia said.

He recited the kiddush, sipped, then tore off a piece of challa, raced through the blessing of the bread and sought Bama's permission for all to be seated.

Bama retreated to the kitchen to fetch the first course: gefilte fish.

“Go help her,” Velia said to Harry.

“She always tells me she doesn't need help.”

“So. Let her say it. You understand nothing.”

In the kitchen, he was turned away but allowed to accompany her and the fish. She doled out the lumps which resembled giant amoebae. Harry watched his father inundate his portion with powerful white horseradish to kill the taste.

“So,” Velia said to her mother, “what's new?,”—bending back to her food while awaiting a perfunctory answer.

Bama was silent.

Velia raised her head.

“I am going back to Warsaw,” Bama said, her eyes seemingly already there.

“You are what!” Velia shouted. “You take a trip now, with everybody talking about war?”

“Not a trip. Forever. And I am going to be married.”

The Catzkers stared open-mouthed as if directed to register simultaneous shock.

Bama laid an envelope on the table.

“My sisters arranged everything. They sent the boat ticket. I leave next Wednesday. I will marry Salik Rabinowitz, the husband of my dear childhood friend Manya Persky, may she rest in peace. We will live in Warsaw in his apartment. He is a wealthy man and an Orthodox Jew. He would never think of coming to godless America, so I will be safe.”

Velia's mouth moved but fashioned only strangulated sounds, like a Hollywood Indian repeating
ugh
. Catzker stared at Bama, blinking periodically, as if to confirm a shaky reality by its reappearance. Harry, feeling a need to break the ominous silence, chose the automatic response to an announcement of marriage:

“Mazel tov
, Bama.”

His mother uttered a short shriek which unlocked her verbal capacity.

“Mazel tov! Mazel tov!
A monster I have brought into this world.”

She turned to Bama.

“Mama, are you crazy? Europe is on the brink of war. One war in Warsaw was not enough for you?”

Bama waved off the words.

“All my nine sisters say there will be no war in Poland They are in Warsaw. They know better than you.”

She reached into the envelope and extracted a passport-size photo, which she handed to Harry.

“This is Salik Rabinowitz.”

The man's features were hardly distinct. The certainties were baldness, ears attached his head at not much less than a ninety-degree angle and a large, round nose. Harry immediately thought of a turtle he had seen recently in an animated cartoon.

He smiled, nodded his head and offered the photo to his mother, who pushed it away. The photo fluttered to the floor. He bent down to retrieve it. Bama's arm restrained him.

“Let her do it.”

“Tell her!” Velia screamed at Moishe.

His father, who, absentmindedly, or inadvertently, had been spooning pure horseradish into his mouth, began to cough violently. He grabbed for a pitcher of water and knocked it over. The water ran off the table. His mother jumped back and up. Bama snatched the wet photo and ran for a mop. Harry followed her to the kitchen, filled a glass with water and put it in his father's hand. He gulped greedily. The coughing stopped. Tears covered his face.

“Tell her,” his mother commanded, standing away from the table where Bama vigorously swished the mop.

“Mrs. Fishman,” he said, asking for her attention which remained with the mop. He shrugged and continued:

“Things are not good for Jews in Europe today …”

“And they were good yesterday,” Bama interrupted. She straightened, returned the mop to the kitchen and emerged wiping the photo with a kitchen towel.

“No,” his father agreed, “things were not wonderful before, but now there is Hitler, who is pledged to expel all Jews from Europe, if not kill them. You see what he has done in Germany.”

“Germany is Germany and Poland is Poland.”

“I cannot argue that point, but all the experts expect Germany to make war on Poland.”

“Experts! Hunchbacks and cripples! Catzker, shall I live out my life alone in this hovel?”

His father was silent. Even his mother seemed swayed.

“What will you do with all your things?” she asked.

“The silver, the kiddush cup and the candleholders, I will take. The rest you can give to that goy god army that plays trumpets.”

“I would like Zadeh's Bible,” Harry said, because he felt it was somehow wrong that it fall into the hands of the Salvation Army.

Bama pulled him against her.

“Of course, Heshele. Of course you shall have it. And the chess set too, so you can remember all the tears he drained from you. The big philosopher. Bigger than God.”

She kissed the top of his head.

“You will visit me in Warsaw.
Oy
, my sisters will love you.”

“Sure, Bama. I'd like that.”

“Mama,” his mother said, “promise me that if there is danger, you will come back.”

“Go shit in the ocean, Leah. Unless you come to Warsaw, you have seen the last of me.”

T
HE NEXT
W
EDNESDAY, AT EIGHT IN THE MORNING, THE
C
ATZKERS
and Stolz pulled up in a cab at Bama's house. She was transporting more than silver. Stolz and Catzker could barely lift a metal steamer trunk the size of a chest of drawers, which did not fit in the cab's trunk. The driver refused to help because of a hernia which he described in great detail as Stolz and Catzker courted the affliction. He agreed to tie down the top of his trunk on condition of an immediate one dollar tip and verbal indemnification against flat tires, chassis damage and a ticket for a driving violation.

Bama looked on imperiously at the grunting men, refusing to relinquish Harry's hand so that he might help.

“They need the exercise,” she proclaimed, smoothing her unbuttoned black Persian lamb coat which, parting, revealed a tight-fitting green suit and askew silk stocking, bunched into high-heeled, pointed black shoes.

Harry never had seen Bama other than in the kitchen or in mourning uniform. Her face, under a black lace veil suspended from a green, plumed hat surely copied from Errol Flynn's Robin Hood attire, seemed remote, unavailable. She was dressed for the world, no longer exclusively his property. Betrayal awakened a baby voice angrily complaining: “Bama go way!”

Stolz sat up front with the driver who quizzed him on hernia symptoms. In the rear, Harry and his father crouched on jump
seats. Mother and daughter shouldered themselves into opposite corners, like boxers between rounds.

“So,” Velia said to no one, “the weather seems calm. It should be a smooth departure.”

Bama also spoke to the air.

“If it were a hurricane, it would be a pleasure to leave this godless country.”

“When did you become so Orthodox?” Velia asked.

“When I live with big philosophers who know nothing with nothing. My luck. All my sisters tell me don't marry that apostate, but I know better.”

“Mrs. Fishman,” Catzker said, trying to head off a mother-daughter brawl, “your late husband was a freethinker, not an apostate. He never renounced being a Jew.”

“Another big philosopher heard from. Shit in the ocean.”

Tacit agreement sealed the rest of the trip in silence.

At the foot of West 38th Street, the driver inspected his cab for damage while two porters wrestled Bama's trunk onto a cart. Bama and Veila followed him. Catzker and Stolz feigned negotiation with the cabby until the women were of sight. Harry stayed with them.

The three walked onto the vast covered pier. Bright sunlight revealed the pigeon droppings and other filth on the angled glass roof. On the left, a gigantic red-and-black swastika flag hoisted between the two squat funnels of the
Bremen
was whipped by the stiff March sea breeze. Snatches of
Deutchland Uber Alles
drifted in and faded as if transmitted from an underpowered radio station.

“My God,” Catzker said, grimacing at the flag, “don't her sisters live in this world?”

“Bama said Hamburg is the closest port to Warsaw,” Harry explained.

“Heshele, if one can skirt Hell, it is best to take a little longer,” his father said, staring at the flag, which had frozen his attention.

“Moishe,” Stolz said, “did you know that this ship was once owned by Jews, as was the whole North German Lloyd Line? And
as Heshele the expert can tell you, it once held the record for the fastest crossing from Europe to America. A Jewish record.”

“Is that true, Heshele?” his father asked. “Your friend Aba tends to convert his imagination to facts. Good for poetry, but not so good for unimportant things like building ships or making a living.”

“Aba is right about the record,” Harry affirmed, “and
that
record was broken by its sister ship,
Europa
.”

They were stopped at the gangplank by a sailor wearing a swastika armband.

“Is needed visitor pass,” he said.

Catzker showed his
Morning Journal
police pass and Stolz flashed credentials from the long-interred Polish newspaper. The sailor pretended to read, then nodded his head.

“Yah, but what about
das
boy?”

“He is the son of my publisher,” Stolz replied, “a powerful man, who has interviewed Chancellor Hitler.”

The man stiffened. His right arm shot up a bit then subsided.

“
Yah
, you can go.”

Stolz extended his arm toward the gangplank in deference to the powerful son, who preceded the two somber journalists.

Onboard, they followed the sound of music to a brass band, including a tuba, playing in the main ballroom, which struck up a Latin American medley of
Brazil, Frenesi
and
South of the Border
. The heroic attempt at a Latin American beat was thwarted by individual instrumentalists who lapsed into the traditional
oom pah pah
, creating a musical war. They concluded by transporting
Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead
to a Bavarian beer hall.

Harry watched a peculiar change come over Stolz and his father. When they had approached the
Bremen
, the men had been nervous, fearful. But as it became clear that those wearing swastika armbands were, in effect, their servants, they had turned into mischievous children given control of the household staff.

Stolz inspected a ten-foot-high fountain spouting water colored
by revolving hidden lights, which was planted dead center of the immense dance floor.

“Swim and dance at the same time, German efficiency at work,” he said, thrusting his hand into the fountain and then signaling for a steward. He showed his hand to the bemedaled man.

“The water is green and my hand is not. This is some sort of trick!”

The man stiffened.

“Not at all, sir. We never claimed our water was green. It is the lights that are green.” The man's English was clipped British Public School.

“Then you should hang a sign on the fountain stating that, so people will not be fooled. German honesty must be beyond reproach. Will you see to that?”

“I shall speak to my superior,” the man said, offering the Nazi salute and a brisk
Heil Hitler
before marching off.

“Well, Aba, you lost that one,” Catzker laughed. “He shoved Hitler in the face of the troublemaker Jew.”

Stolz shook his head.

“Not in the least. You must never underestimate the German lack of humor. We had a perfectly normal, logical exchange. He and his superior will arrive at a logical conclusion. As for Hitler, he sealed our serious discourse. Made it kosher, so to speak.
Oy
, from such a people anything is possible.”

“What do you think, Heshele,” his father asked, “was the man polite or insolent?”

Harry had paid little attention to the exchange. The hated swastika, symbol of pure evil, till now a black-and-white photo in a newspaper, swam all around him like intersecting bent eels. The angels of death who wore them were benign, obsequious. Instead of barbed wire there was highly polished rosewood, ebony and brass. He felt trapped in a bizarre nightmare.

“Don't you want to kill all these Nazis?” he said.

“Yes, Heshele,” his father answered, “but how? We must settle,
as Jews have done since the killing days of the Bible ended, for gaining a moral or intellectual victory. It satisfies our souls as we are being murdered by our inferiors.”

Along the narrow gangways they delighted in forcing swastikas to give way. In the Hall of Shops, Stolz sniffed and said: “I think so, but I don't believe it. Not even the Germans …” He rushed toward a small mother-of-pearl fountain and bent over it. “Yes! It is. It's real perfume.”

Harry sniffed. He sneezed, sending perfume flying. From somewhere a swastika appeared with a mop. Harry started to apologize. Stolz pulled him away.

“Heshele, never … Listen, I have an idea. Do you know anything about this ship that is not so good? I mean that is not one hundred percent German?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“OK.”

He stopped a swastika.

“What is the name of the captain of this vessel?”

The man snapped to attention.

“Captain Ziegenbaum!”

“No, first name.”

“I do not know it.”

Stolz showed his press credentials and signaled to Catzker to do the same.

“We are journalists. We would like to talk to Captain Ziegenbaum about his most important post. We are most impressed with his ship.”

“Wait,” the swastika said, “I telephone.”

He disappeared into a cabin.

“Aba, you are going to get us arrested,” Catzker said, “but I don't mind. Do you, Heshele?”