But I resisted. If Oscar Jacoby chose to fall in love with me he would do so understanding that I was a girl who wore crimson. And the fact that I had recommenced secret applications of Gomper's Patent Skin Whitener was neither here nor there. I was doing it for myself.
Simeon visited Uncle Israel for an hour every day, Monday to Friday, with a digest of who was buying and who was selling, what was up and what was down. He also, I learned, on a day when our visits coincided, brought certain items into the house under cover of papers for signing. Knishes. And cheesecake. Aunt Fish had imposed a strict regime on Uncle after his seizure, but as I had heard her say to Ma, she was baffled.
“Nothing seems to help,” she said. “He has nothing but clear broth and a cigarette for luncheon yet he doesn't reduce an inch.”
I saw a difference in him, though. His body might not have shrunk, but his spirit had, and the palsy on one side of his face made him look sad even when he was smiling.
“I have to learn about Passover,” I told him. “Ma seems to think I'll let her down in front of the Jacobys.”
He said, “I haven't been to a Seder since I was…”
He wasn't coming to this one either. Aunt Fish had overridden the doctor's verdict that it would do him good to go out and circulate.
“It's the dribbling,” I'd heard my aunt confiding to Ma. “At home I can remind him to mop, but how should we go on at a party?”
“We used to have such Seders,” Uncle said. “When I was a boy. Such…We were slaves, in the land of…And the Angel of Death passed over us. Smote the…and passed over us. My mother. Oh, we used to have such Seders.”
I said, “Uncle, does this mean we've decided to be Jewish again?”
He smiled.
There was always a…” he began, and then stopped, looking around him for the missing word. This happened a lot after the seizure. His speech was slower than before and often, by the time he was ready to use a word, it seemed to have fluttered out of reach.
I said, “What was there always?”
“Hmm,” he said. “I'll think of it.”
I peeled him an apple and quartered it.
“A stranger,” he said, “that's what there always was. You had to have a stranger at your table, to share your blessings. Because if you don't share them, they're not really blessings. It was a good time to be a stranger. You could have had ten dinners.”
I couldn't imagine such a thing. You might get a murderer or a robber in your house, or a smelly unfortunate. Unless it was someone who came with a letter of introduction, in which case I suppose he might not count as a stranger. When Ma and Pa gave dinners there had always been people like Mr. and Mrs. Teller and Dr. and Mrs. Strunck, so you knew where you stood. You knew what you would talk about. I could see that a stranger might make things more interesting.
I said, “We'll be the strangers at the Jacobys'. I guess that's why we were asked.”
“No,” he said, “I don't think so. I think you're asked because…”
He never did remember why.
“My mother,” he said, “used to make such…Such knaidlach.”
I wiped the dribble from his chin. I had noticed that Uncle Israel remembered things from long ago much better than things from right now.
“Dear Yetta has quite advanced ideas, you know?” Ma warned me proudly, as we climbed to the Jacobys' front door. “She has introduced some very modern furnishing trends.”
Aunt Fish puffed and panted behind us. I had noticed, that very afternoon, how Ma and her sister appeared to have changed places. Ma was now the one who had energy and took the lead.
I attributed Ma's particular friskiness that day to my presence. She was excited at the prospect of showing me off to her new friends, and with good reason. I had topped off my crimson Slav outfit with a Cossack hat in black astrakhan, and on the recommendation of the beautician at Elizabeth Arden I was wearing scarlet lip color. Oscar Jacoby was going to be stunned, and she knew it.
The Jacobys lived in a dull row house on East 69th Street. It wasn't pretty like ours, with patterns in the brickwork or limestone tracery. Outside it had nothing to distinguish it from its neighbor. Inside, though, it was quite different from anything I'd ever seen. There were no rugs or tassels or doodads. There was very little furniture and the few chairs and couches they did have were covered in pale slipcovers. And everything was painted ivory. It was a house that seemed full of light and air and the thought crossed my mind that if Oscar's wooing should turn out to be irresistible I should be very happy to be mistress of it some day.
Mr. Jacoby and Miss Landau were waiting for us in the parlor, with an elderly couple called Roth, both deaf, and a young Landau cousin from St. Louis who wore eyeglasses and a little silk cap, just like the one in Pa's vitrine. Of Oscar and his brother there was no sign.
Mrs. Roth examined me with a hatchet face and remarked loudly to her husband that there was an undressed person in the room and he should avert his eyes. I saw Aunt Fish give Ma one of her didn't-I-say-as-much looks, until Yetta Landau stepped forward to defend me.
“Young women have earned themselves a new style,” she declared, “and a wonderful style it is too. So free and healthy.”
“Well said, Yetta.” Judah Jacoby added his seal of approval to the length of my skirt.
“And Poppy makes up her own designs,” Miss Landau continued, chastening my aunt still more. “If I were a few years younger I might be commissioning her new look for myself.”
Mr. Jacoby laughed and said she should do it anyway. They made a very jolly pair. I wondered why he had never married her, since she had famously been such a mother to his children.
Suddenly, something bumped against the outside of the parlor door, there was the sound of a scuffle and then the high clear voice of a child.
“But you have to,” it cried. “You
have
to. We made it specially for you and now you're being beastly. I'm telling. I'm telling Auntsie.”
The door burst open and a thin boy stood before us.
“Auntsie,” he said, “Oscar's being beastly about the Seder. He says he won't come. He says he doesn't have to. But he does have to, doesn't he?”
“Murray,” Miss Landau sighed, “first you must say how-de-do and
gut yomtov
to our company. To Mr. and Mrs. Roth, and Mrs. Fish, and Mrs. Minton and Miss Minton, and Cousin Landau.”
“How-de-do and
gut yomtov,”
he gabbled, not looking at any of us. “Now will you please tell Oscar?”
But Miss Landau allowed no cutting of corners. He was made to shake each of us by the hand.
“My name's Poppy Minkel,” I said, when he reached me. “Minkel. Not Minton.”
I took Murray Jacoby for about nine years old, but he was twelve and just a slow developer. He still is.
Miss Landau went in search of Oscar, with Murray close at her side eager to see justice done, while the rest of us went in to dinner.
The table was set with a fine white cloth and candles. In the center was a dish, exactly as Uncle Israel had said there would be, with a bone and an egg and parsley and other things. Mr. Roth brought out a silk cap from his pocket, too, and clapped it to the back of his head and Mrs. Roth made him change seats twice, so that he'd have to sit neither next to nor opposite an undressed person.
Aunt Fish was admiring the stemware and Ma was nervously eyeing the little back-to-front book left in front of each placement, like a child's picture book, but with strange Hebrew writing facing the English words. We Jewish people must be very clever indeed it seemed to me, if we could make any sense of such an unusual way of writing.
“Aha!” said Mr. Jacoby, “here he is.”
Yetta Landau came into the dining room, and behind her, allowing himself to be pushed along by the boy Murray, who was beaming from ear to ear, came Oscar. Not tall, not husky. He had the same darkness around the eyes that his father had, and the same smooth skin. He bowed inattentively and took the seat next to mine, Murray sat opposite, Miss Landau went to the place at Judah Jacoby's right hand. Ma was at his left hand, in a seat of honor, smiling inanely at everything and nothing. She always did this when her composure was threatened and I knew, from the way she kept fingering it, that the little Hebrew book was troubling her.
One seat remained empty, next to the boy Murray.
“Well now,” said Mr. Jacoby, and he got to his feet.
“But are we all here?” Ma asked. I believe she hoped that if she spoke out with a confident air on inconsequential matters, she would be saved from anything more onerous, like knowing what to do with the ceremonial parsley, or how to say the squiggly foreign words. If ever Ma saw a difficult subject advancing on her, she would divert it with a remark about the weather, and this was a technique that had served her well. But that evening I sensed her nervous twittering might be the undoing of her.
I decided, mainly out of benevolence, to keep watch over her. I knew I was looking astonishingly good and I was sitting right beside a most satisfactory suitor. I was at peace with the world, but in particular I was at peace with my mother, who had dragged herself back into society and taxed herself with lectures and even reopened the difficult subject of Jewishness all in the interests of my future happiness.
“I think, Ma,” I said pleasantly, “the empty chair is for Elijah.”
She promptly grabbed the rope I had thrown her and hanged herself with it.
“Of course,” she said. “Elijah. Well, there was a great deal of traffic on Park Avenue. We were almost delayed ourselves. Does he have far to come?”
The boy Murray guffawed into his hand, Mr. Jacoby chewed the inside of his cheek and I blushed, for Ma, for myself and for poor Uncle Israel who had taught me what he could about Seders and then had to stay home lest he dribble and disgrace us all.
Miss Landau lit the candles.
“Well now,” Mr. Jacoby said again. He poured wine into the cup in front of him and then I heard, for the first time in my life, the sound of those strange Hebrew letters.
He took the big matzo crackers and broke one of them in two. One piece he wrapped in a napkin and Miss Landau took it away. The rest he held up, showing them to us.
“This is the bread of affliction,” he said.
And so the Seder began.
More of the thick red wine was poured and then the boy Murray did his party piece, pronouncing the Hebrew words and looking very pleased with himself.
“Now in English,” Mr. Jacoby said, “so that everyone understands.”
“Why is this night different from all other nights?” Murray recited. “Why on this night do we eat only unleavened bread? Why on this night do we eat only bitter herbs? Why on this night do we dip our herbs twice? Why on this night must we all recline?”
“And who cares?” Oscar said, quietly.
“Oscar!” Miss Landau warned.
“Because if God hadn't brought us out of Egypt,” Mr. Jacoby said, “we'd still be slaves.”
Ma nodded solemnly, as though she had never heard a wiser answer.
“God didn't bring us out of Egypt,” Oscar said. His hand was trembling, so the piece of onyx in his cuff link drummed against the rim of his plate. “Pharaoh chased us out.”
Everyone was looking at him, except Aunt Fish, who was examining the silver.
“We'd be there yet,” he said. “If some Pharaoh hadn't chased us out we'd still be sitting there, playing the tragic card.”
The cousin from St. Louis prepared to speak. He took off his eyeglasses first. Perhaps he could hear that cuff link rattling too.
He said, “You're not suggesting slavery is an agreeable condition?”
“I'm saying it's an easy habit,” Oscar snapped back, “human nature being what it is. Once you've got a slave and kept him down awhile, you don't have to worry about him striking out for freedom. He might mutter a bit, but that's as far as he'll go. You can pretty much depend on him to sit on his haunches and eat his rations.”
Cousin Landau fingered his eyeglasses some more.
“You've come back from this war a cynic,” he said.
“It's remarkable I've come back at all,” Oscar replied. “Well, if we must have this Seder why don't we get on with it?”
So Mr. Jacoby told the story about the striking down of firstborns. Camels and asses and wicked Egyptians, but only boy firstborns, and not Jewish ones, because God watches out for his own. Then he dipped his finger in his glass and dripped wine, drop by drop, and Murray called out all the different plagues that had beset the people of Egypt.
“Blood, frogs, lice,” he shouted. “Wild beasts, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness at noon.” It was obvious he was enjoying this part.
The evening dragged on. Everything was explained with a story. The matzo crackers, the horseradish, the lamb shank. It was seven o'clock and there was still no sign of dinner. My stomach rumbled so loud even the deaf Roths seemed to notice it, and I believe I saw Aunt Fish suppressing a yawn.
At long last Miss Landau took away the Seder dish, and their Irish brought in soup with dumplings. Ma, who had been visibly shocked by Murray's joyful shouting of the words “frogs” and “boils,” was restored by her first spoonful of soup and became quite gay.
“And shall you be going into the family business,” she asked Oscar, “now you're back from your adventures?”
I had been wondering the very same thing myself. The House of Jacoby was especially known for its minks, and I could imagine the pleasure of wandering between long racks of deep furs, free to take my pick.
“Adventures?” he said. “Is that what you think?”
Ma quite missed his tone and continued smiling.
“But surely,” said the cousin, “war is a kind of adventure. Isn't there a need in every man to run a noble risk? I wish I could have been there.”
“You may have your chance yet,” Oscar said. “There'll be another war, and the saps who went this time won't go again. Next war, they'll take even you, cousin, and then you can run your noble risk.”
“Another war?” I said. “Do you really think so? Do you think it'll come soon?”
He didn't even look at me.
“Not all that soon,” he said. “Not until people have had time to forget. But it'll happen.”