Displaced Persons (19 page)

Yes, it is a beautiful suit, he answered in Yiddish. He stood him
self straight, turned around once, like a model, and then stopped to look at her, stretching his eyes as open as possible, lips pressed against his gums in a grimace she knew, a grimace he used, not always successfully, to keep himself from crying.

It is beautiful, Simale. And you know what? Berel lifted his eyebrows high, almost, it felt, to his hairline. He imagined the skin on his forehead folding and pulling. His lips and his gums were dry. You know what? Simale, you wouldn’t believe it, this place your husband sent me, but this beautiful suit, it was so cheap! So cheap.

Sima twisted her lips to the side of her mouth. Her fingers covered an eye: in shame?

He smoothed the lapel to his chest.

April 1967

S
LIVOVITZ
. S
LIVOVITZ
. P
AVEL HAD
to say it twice, three times. He even wrote it out for the liquor store clerk, a young boy, not twenty-five, surely Jewish—how could he not know what Pavel was saying? At last the boy nodded, squinting showily at Pavel’s careful, fine capital letters.

“Oh, the clear stuff. Why do you say it with a ‘sshh’? There’s no
h.
”

Pavel maintained his dignity; he refused to answer. He stood at the counter and waited.

The boy pushed brown curls out of his eyes; they bounced back onto his cheeks. “In English the
s
means ‘ss,’ not ‘sshh.’” The words came out loud, slow but tinged with impatience, as if Pavel couldn’t possibly decipher them. The boy bent down for a key.

“Do you have it?” said Pavel, his voice smooth. “Or shall I take my business elsewhere?”

“I have it,” said the boy.

Pavel had to suppress a smile. I! Who was ‘I’? Only the owner was ‘I’! And if the owner, no doubt the boy’s father, knew how he was speaking! Pavel unbuttoned his raincoat, pushed his hand inside his jacket for the handkerchief, unfolded it, coughed gently, subtly. I!

The boy walked to the back of the store, toward a glass cabinet, and opened it. He took out a bottle and handed it to Pavel.

“What is this?” said Pavel.

“Slivovitz,” said the boy, pronouncing it wrong. “What you asked for.”

“I did not ask for this.” Pavel pointed to the label: made in yugoslavia. “Don’t you have other kinds? A little higher, you know, quality?” He placed extra emphasis on the word
quality
. Let this child understand! He was a new customer but a real customer, one on whom the store would be able to depend. And, more than a dozen years in this country, not so much of a greenhorn, either.

“Well then, why don’t you take a look yourself?”

A note of challenge in the voice. So! In fact that was exactly what Pavel wanted, a look himself. He moved in front of the cabinet. Dust sparkled on the corners of the bottom two shelves, scattered with flasks. Ah—there was something. He pulled out a large bottle: made in czechoslovakia. “This,” said Pavel, victorious, tapping the picture of dark plums on the label, “this is slivovitz.”

“One hundred and eighty proof,” muttered the boy, ringing him up. “Jesus Christ.”

“Who?” said Pavel.

“Forget it,” said the boy.

O
RDINARILY
, P
AVEL WAS SURE,
he would have turned and left, having given a bitter retort, at the first or second sign of the disrespectful behavior of the clerk. There was a phrase Pavel loved, one he learned
even before coming to the United States, in English classes organized by the refugee committees in the displaced persons camp:
the customer is always right.
He had said this to himself often in the shop he owned with his brother-in-law, where he frequently dealt with men who liked their suits only one way and not the other, then changed their minds after a good deal of work had been done. The customer is always right. Even now, when the business was adjusting with the times to include more wholesale, textiles and fabrics to be sold to larger companies, he found the phrase useful. It wasn’t only the individual trying on for a special occasion who liked to be difficult. A buyer, a retailer, these people were controlled by their superiors; they haggled and bargained, but Pavel would be calm and flexible. One had to be cautious, of course, not too foolish, but even business-to-business, the sentence was a useful one to keep in mind. The customer is always right! It helped quiet the anger that sometimes pulsed up inside him when a man used a high tone, a loud voice, a harsh word.

Didn’t the boy know about the customer? And to correct Pavel’s language!
Slivovitz
was a word as familiar to Pavel as
orange juice
, or
Coca-Cola
, was to this boy. When Pavel was a child, his father would ferment the plum brandy at home, storing the bottles on the shelves of the kitchen. When it came time to open and taste, every year, without fail, Father would march around the house in fury. The slivovitz was terrible! It was true. His father really did not know how to make it. The cherry
vishniac
he made was good—sweet perhaps, a drink that women liked—but good. As for slivovitz, it was Pavel’s mother’s side that knew how to make it. Father couldn’t compete.

No, for certain, ordinarily Pavel would not have stood for the boy’s manner. At the least, he would have promised himself to speak to the owner. But this was a new neighborhood. The houses were each separated by wide lawns, the few apartment complexes, like the one he now lived in, were spread out, low to the ground, not cramped, with several stories piled one on top of the other. It was a good neigh
borhood, the kind where the liquor stores were not so close together. This one was near the new apartment; it didn’t pay to make enemies too quickly.

It was something else too. Lately, the sight of boys in their twenties, younger, made Pavel quiet. Silent. It had been worrisome at the time, but now Pavel thanked God every day and every night that Fela had had difficulty conceiving and carrying. If Larry had been born even two years earlier, he would be of draft age. It had happened to a friend of Pavel’s from camp, that his son had been sent to the war in Vietnam. So far, one month of unbearable anguish for the parents, and the boy was still in one piece—a miracle, but just that, a miracle. Pavel preferred not to count on miracles.

Better, he preferred not to deal with luck at all, good or bad. People out of danger did not deal with luck. They did not invite it into their lives, not even for a moment. To antagonize a boy in a liquor store over disrespect—this seemed like a way of asking an evil eye to come into the new apartment and gaze hard at Larry. The war would have to end, people said one year, at most two, but what if? The draft age was eighteen. One could avoid it even longer if one went to college, and Larry was smart, very smart, he would be in college and safe if the war did not end.

The rule was, the boys in college could stay in college. And if they changed the rule? But it was America. Laws were difficult to change, even with so much agitation. Pavel knew this with his head, with the mind that read the paper every day, but still he couldn’t get rid of his worry. Pavel’s father had served in the First World War, for the Austrian empire, no less. It was just before Pavel was born, and Father had never spoken about it. Never. No one had ever said so, but they all knew it was a forbidden subject. Father was the only one in the family to fight. The rest, on Pavel’s mother’s side and on his father’s, had managed to hide themselves in the small villages of Poland that thrived on the influx of young Jewish men evading the armies. What
failure in the family had made his father a soldier? As far as Pavel had heard, in the emperor’s troops at that time, the Jews weren’t treated so differently from the rest. Officially, everyone’s blood was more or less the same. Still! A needless risk, unimaginable if Father’s family had moved east sooner. In Poland a good family did not let a child go to the military. No question. War or no war, for a Jew it was a death sentence. One saved for years for the bribes.

T
HE FEELING OF TRIUMPH
over his purchase had returned by the time Pavel arrived home. Fela had finished cleaning up from dinner, and his walk had reinvigorated him, as it did every night.

Fela saw the paper bag in Pavel’s hand as he walked into the kitchen, where she sat at the white table, drinking tea.

“Hello,” she said in English. A bad sign. But then changed to Yiddish. Did you get what you went for? she asked him, still unsmiling.

I found slivovitz! said Pavel, pressing his lips down so as not to smile too much. I didn’t think there would be a store in the neighborhood that sold it! But you see, if you try, you can get everything. And a good quality!

“Mazel tov,”
said Fela. What about the milk?

She was angry. Pavel slapped his hand to his forehead. Oh. I forgot. Completely forgot.

Fela kept sipping. Why do you ask me what I need if you can’t remember it?

I know, I know.

Nine-thirty. It is too late to get some now. There’s enough for their breakfast, but you won’t have it for your coffee.

Pavel stood at the head of the kitchen table. He had no response.

All right, Pavel. Could you go in to Helen? She won’t sleep. She
won’t listen to me. She wants to read. A book you bought her. She should sleep!

It was true, Pavel thought, Helen did not like to sleep. She asked for permission to finish her chapter before shutting out the lights, then cheated and slipped in another one. Fela claimed it was a function of what the child was reading, suspense novels. Crime novels. If Helen read something else, Fela insisted, she would get tired more easily. Of course she couldn’t sleep! Couldn’t Pavel buy her something more appropriate for a young girl? A girl did not have to choose everything on her own.

Pavel loved to buy books for his daughter. But he let her pick. How should he decide what she should read? She was eleven, “going on twelve,” as she liked to say, a phrase Pavel found very funny. There was a paperback exchange in Jackson Heights that she adored, although Pavel felt some embarrassment walking in there and breathing the odor of old paper, smudged ink. He could afford new books for his children! And if they weren’t new, they should be in the library, where it was natural for people to share. Still, the used bookstore had a pleasant atmosphere, with a little couch and pillows in the corners between the bookcases. Pavel and even Fela would sometimes leave Helen there under the supervision of the shopkeeper while they ran a few doors down to the pharmacy or butcher shop. But mostly Pavel would sit on the couch, stretching his leg toward the corner, reading his paper while Helen cocked her head and imitated the adults browsing. Occasionally he would give a little smile to the manager, a lanky man in his thirties, who smiled back without saying anything. He had a certain look in his eyes, something like friendliness, Pavel thought, but not exactly friendliness. He watched Pavel too closely, too—Pavel did not know what it was. It made Pavel uncomfortable. Perhaps the owner was a little strange, he had customers who were not so clean-looking, who got into discussions about politics and stayed late into the evenings, after other stores on the block had closed. Fela had
learned the owner’s name, but Pavel had forgotten it, and he felt, after a few visits, that it would be impolite to ask him in person. Each time Pavel left the store with his daughter he promised himself to ask Fela the name—it would make it easier, less awkward, Pavel thought, if he could greet the owner by name, as an equal, when he walked in—but each time he returned home his head was full of other thoughts.

Helen had cried on the day of the move from Jackson Heights to Rego Park. It was terrible. For Larry, five years older, a little change was not a problem. He was looking forward to the move, even, and he knew some of the children in the neighborhood from Hebrew school already. That was Larry, always independent. Helen grew attached to things. She loved the small playground she no longer played in, the fraying, unbalanced swings that made Pavel’s stomach twist in fear when he watched other children; even as he lectured to Fela that she protected too much, he had never allowed Helen to go on them. She loved the bakery that made a special chocolate cake and, when she was smaller, had handed her a sandwich cookie, dyed green, in the shape of a leaf, every time her mother made a holiday purchase. She loved the bookstore owner. A week or so before the final move, when most of the clothes and things in the apartment were already in boxes, she had peeked into the store—its door was open despite the April rain—and shouted something toward the cash register.

Pavel hadn’t quite caught it. “What did you tell him, Helinka?”

“I told him we’d be back, we’d be back,” said Helen, gripping his hand, stumbling after him on the wet street.

“Rego Park has a bookstore, too,
shaifele
. It’s a good neighborhood. You don’t have to go back.”

“But I want to!”

“All right, you want to.”

“Oh, Daddy, come on.” Her voice was shaky.

“All right, all right! If we have time.”

“I have time!”

“True,” said Pavel.

“I told him we were going to move, and he said, That’s too bad. That’s too bad, he said, because I’m a very good customer. An excellent customer, in fact.” Helen had dropped her father’s hand, stopped on the sidewalk. “I told him not to worry, he wouldn’t lose our business.”

Pavel laughed, teeth bared; he couldn’t help it. “All right,
mammele
, all right. I promise.”

“Swear?”

“What?” said Pavel.

“It’s like a real promise.”

“Of course it’s a real promise. I promise. Have I ever broken a promise?”

“I don’t remember,” said Helen.

“Have I ever refused you anything you asked for?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured, looking at her shoes as they scraped along the sidewalk.

“Ah-hah,” Pavel had said.

Now, pushed by Fela’s annoyance, he went to Helen’s little room, opening the door as he knocked. The lamp above Helen’s bed was on at its dimmest, as if she would have longer to read the less electricity she used.

Her hands gripped a yellow-edged paperback. She didn’t look up.

“Helinka,” said Pavel.

It was her turn to promise. “Look,” she said. She flipped the book to face him. “Just two more pages.”

“That’s what you said to your mother a few minutes ago.”

“It was such a short chapter, it wasn’t fair.”

“Just to the end of this chapter, you really have to promise now. Okay,
shaifele
? Please?”

He closed the door, then stood outside, hearing the page turning. A minute, he would give her, maybe two. He walked to Larry’s room. With Larry he was afraid to go in without knocking, but he didn’t
want to interrupt. Pavel tried to glimpse in through the light in the doorjamb. Just to see. Through the crack Pavel could see the outline of his son bent over his blue desk, doing his homework. Diligent.