TRANSPORT TO MONTICELLO by Paulette K. Fire
Summer 1950
Sam sat at the dinette table, waiting for the driver. Sam’s white shortsleeved shirt, so crisp that morning, was now soaked and stuck to his undershirt. It was ninety- eight degrees outside with a humidity to match, and at least that hot inside, what with the windows shut and no air conditioning. He could open a window, just for a little breeze, if there was such a thing in this New York City summer, but the thought of then having to shut and lock and check if the window was really locked was too much.
Sam didn’t know how to drive. His wife had suggested that they go to a driving school. “We’re not too old to learn. Look at this couple.” Miriam pointed to an advertisement in the Yiddish newspaper Forverts. “They’re the same age as us.”
Sam looked at the photograph of a man and woman standing in front of a car. The man held a set of keys between his thumb and index finger. The woman had her arm around the man’s waist. They smiled with their straight American teeth. A couple in their thirties.
Two happy people.
Every morning when Sam looked in the mirror, he expected to see the wrinkled face of his father, his grandfather. Gray-haired, bearded. Instead he saw the face of a 38-year- old man. A face without a wrinkle, a pleasant face. A full head of brown hair, clean-shaven. And Miriam with her black hair and green eyes looked even younger than the woman in the advertisement. “We might be the same age as them,” Sam said, “but this is not for us.”
“Why not? We’re smart people. Educated. It’s like any other school.”
It was not like any school he had ever attended. “Miriam, we don’t have the nerves for this. Let’s leave it to a professional driver.”
The professional Short Line Bus driver would have been happy to drive them to the town of Monticello in the Catskills, but what about the clothes, sheets, pillows, blankets, pots, pans, and towels, all packed carefully in the four large boxes Sam had somehow managed to get from the Daitch Supermarket? And the two valises – one brown, one black – containing the manila envelope marked “IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS” in red ink, the album of irreplaceable photographs, Miriam’s rhinestone necklace, Sam’s blood pressure medicine and his notebooks of poems, what about those?
“There is no choice,” Sam had said. “We will have to hire a driver of a private car.”
Sam listened for the buzzing of the intercom, but there was no buzzing. Instead there was the pounding of a fist on the door of the apartment. “Who is this?” Sam got up from his chair, almost toppling it over.
“Vito. Sal Vito,” said the man who had somehow entered the building without buzzing and without being buzzed in.
Sam peered through the peephole. A big nose, a wrinkled forehead, a few wisps of white hair. “You are the driver, Mr. Salvatore Vito?”
“That’s me. Sal Vito.”
Sam turned the two deadbolts and the Segal lock and undid the chain. He looked through the peephole one more time before he opened the door.
A short fat man stood there wiping the sweat off his head and face with a handkerchief. This person wasn’t quite what he had expected. But what had he expected? He had little experience with such men.
“I am Sam Goldberg.”
“Nice to meet you.” The driver didn’t offer his hand. Sam was about to call out, “Miriam,” but she was already at the door, dressed in her new outfit, a blue skirt and blouse she called maternity clothes.
“Mr. Vito.” Miriam extended her hand.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am.” Vito wiped his hand with the handkerchief and shook Miriam’s hand. “So what do you say we hit the road, folks?”
This hit the road expression had a certain urgency to it, an urgency Sam did not care for. “One moment, sir. What road are you taking?”
“The highway. Fastest way there.”
“Fast is not important. We don’t need fast. We can go there slowly. That’s fine with us. Take your time.”
“Look Mr. Goldman, I’m not planning to spend all day on this trip. I have two more after you. Fastest road there, that’s how we go. You’ll be there before you know it.”
He had two more customers after them? Thank God they were the first. Fresh in the morning the man didn’t look so good – rumpled, worn out – so after a full day of work? Gevalt. And he couldn’t even get the name right? Was he hard of hearing? People needed to pass a vision test to get a driver’s license – Sam knew this from his eye doctor who would announce, somewhat gleefully, that there was no way Sam could ever pass the eye exam – but did they also test for hearing?
“Sir,” Sam said, “we’re in no hurry, absolutely no rush at all. And the name is Goldberg.” A golden mountain, not a golden man, but no need to discuss this with Sal Vito. He did not look like a man interested in such linguistic niceties.
“Goldberg, sorry. Didn’t quite catch the name. Listen Mr. Goldberg, this is how I make a living. This is not a tour bus. I’m not taking the scenic route.”
Who was talking about a scenic route? And they were definitely not interested in going on any tour – in a car yet – they just wanted to get to the bungalow colony in the safest way possible. But men like Mr. Vito apparently did not understand these things. Such men were not afraid of speeding cars and trucks that could crash into them, causing them to spin around, smashing the windows and doors and passengers inside. Such men had no fear of the ordinary, but put them in the extraordinary, and then what did you have? That butcher in the ghetto, Shtarkman, a man massive in height and weight, five minutes and the Gestapo broke him.
“So what are you taking?” Vito asked. Miriam pointed in the direction of the living room. “We are taking these boxes.”
The boxes, each carefully tied with a rope, placed one next to the other against the sofa, had occupied the living room for the past week. Not willing or able to climb over the boxes to get to the sofa, Sam had brought two kitchen chairs, red vinyl with brass tacks and chrome metal, into the living room. When Miriam commented that the chairs clashed with the décor, Sam reassured her that it was only temporary, and this way they could sit together as he read his newspaper, and she listened to her radio programs of sobbing women hoping to become queens for a day. “The audience decides who has the biggest tragedy. The winner gets a washing machine and a dryer,” Miriam explained.
“They’re doing all this for a washing machine?” Sam had asked.
“And a dryer.”
Now Sam watched as Vito went into the living room, looked at the boxes, gave one a push, pulled on the rope of another. “These four boxes? Two boxes I said. Two boxes max. Where do you think I’m going to put these crates?”
Yes, the man had said two boxes max. Those were his exact words. Though Sam hadn’t been sure if the driver was calling him Max or if he meant maximum. In either case, it was not possible. They could not leave any of the boxes behind. It was bad enough that he had had to leave his books behind. Even when he had gone into the ghetto, he had taken his books.
“What do you need the books for?” Miriam had asked. “Are you going to reread them? There is no room in the bungalow for all these books.”
“But what if something happens to them? What if a thief breaks in?”
“A thief interested in Yiddish and Polish literature? Sam, we’ll be back in three weeks. It’s just three weeks.”
“Mr. Vito,” Sam said, “I suggest you tie the boxes on top of the car.”
“Four crates, each one, Christ almighty, almost as big as a Frigidaire, you want me to tie on top of the car?”
“The driver last year had no trouble doing it,” Miriam said.
Sam looked at Miriam. The driver last year? What was she talking about? He wanted to say to her, in Polish, “Don’t make up stories. He’ll catch us lying and God knows what’ll happen.”
“Yeah, well, he must have had a Mack truck with a trailer attached.”
“If this is not a job you can do, we will find someone who can. We’ll call another driver,” Miriam said.
What other driver? Did she have a list of names hidden somewhere?
“Wait a minute, lady. I didn’t say I couldn’t do the job. Did I say I couldn’t do the job?” And with that Vito shoved the first box out of the apartment and down the hall to the elevator.
“Excuse me, Mr. Vito,” Sam said. “Perhaps it would be better to carry the box so as not to tear it.”
As the elevator door closed, they heard, “Goddamn it. Carry the goddamn box. Weighs five goddamn tons.”
Once all the boxes were downstairs, Sam and Miriam locked up the apartment quickly – well, as quickly as they could, what with Sam locking the door, checking, rechecking, and then having Miriam check, and then checking yet again. Between all the checking and the need to get downstairs to keep an eye on this man claiming to be Sal Vito, Sam wondered, not for the first time, if this whole trip was a mistake. It’s for Miriam, he reminded himself. Miriam and the baby. He spit three times, just in case the evil eye had read his thoughts, picked up the two valises, one in each hand, and walked down the hallway to the elevator.
The four boxes stood in the middle of the street, not one next to the other, but haphazardly placed in the vicinity of Sal Vito and what must be his automobile. With the valises by his side, Sam watched as the driver tied two boxes to the top, shoved one in the front seat, pushed another into the trunk, sighing, grunting, cursing, mopping his forehead with the dirty handkerchief. And just as Sam thought, Thank God this is over, Sal Vito turned from the car and with a yell pointed to the two valises – the brown one and the black one – really two not very big valises. “What the hell is this?” he shouted.
“This is not a problem,” Sam said. “The valises will be in the back with us.”
“Fine. Sit in the back with those suitcases. Sit on top of them for all I care.” Vito’s face had turned red and there was a vein bulging in his forehead.
This was not good. Something had to be done to calm down the situation. “Sir, after all your hard work, perhaps I can get you a drink to refresh yourself with?” If they were upstairs, he would have offered Vito a glass of Manischewitz or at least an orange juice. “Maybe a juice?”
“How about a soda?”
Sam crossed the street to the La Bodega grocery, not an establishment he frequented, but the Daitch Supermarket was two blocks away and best not to try the man’s patience.
The grocery was small and dark. The air was filled with the aroma of spices, hot and pungent. Cartons and cans and bottles crowded the shelves. “A soda, please,” Sam said to the man behind the counter.
“What kind?”
“Any kind is good. But please not from the freezer. Good, that’s good,” Sam said as the grocer handed him a warm bottle from one of the shelves. He had tried this drink called soda once on a hot day when he’d been going door to door selling encyclopedias. When the counterman at the luncheonette asked which soda he wanted, Sam had pointed to a green glass bottle. The drink was brown. He had thought that it was a kind of tea, this soda drink. But it wasn’t tea or like any drink he had ever tasted. It tasted worse than medicine and was cold as ice. Later that evening Sam came down with a cough. Sal Vito might not be a friend, but Sam would not, no he could not, allow such harm to befall the man.
A warm soda for Mr. Vito, and what was this? A plate of cookies with colored candies, yellow, red, green, brown, orange. “This is for eating?” Sam pointed to the cookies.
“Of course. Please.”
Sam, not wanting to offend, accepted a cookie. His tooth hit a hard piece and for a moment he thought, this will all end with an emergency trip to the dentist. But no broken tooth, instead the sweetness of chocolate.
“Very tasty.” Before Sam could say anything the grocer took a brown paper bag and with a flick of the wrist the bag was open and he was putting cookies inside, and although Sam had not been thinking of purchasing any cookies, how could he refuse the man? “How much?”
“Nada. Free of charge. Enjoy.”
Sam returned with the soda and the bag of cookies. Miriam sat in the back seat, next to the two valises. “Everything is okay?” he asked her.
“Everything is fine. Please, let’s just go.”
Sam handed the driver the soda. “To your health.”
Vito took a gulp. “Jesus H. Christ! What the . . . Did someone piss in the bottle?”
Not seeing a need to answer this question, Sam squeezed into the back seat. The car moved slowly at first, allowing him one last glimpse of his apartment with its fire escape, the building with its four stories, the streets with Nedicks and Woolworth’s and the Great Shanghai and Cuchifritos and Rosenblum’s Delicatessen. The signs in orange and green and red and gold with names he could not pronounce. The men standing outside the liquor store drinking from brown- bagged bottles and cans. The smell of hot dogs and sweat and car fumes. The mugginess and smog. The people sitting on the stoops of the buildings dressed in the colors of a carnival – pinks and turquoises and purples – shouting words he did not understand. The children in bathing suits laughing as they splashed in the water of the fire hydrants.
This place, these people, they were not home. They were not his Poland with its dignified gray that became the gunmetal gray, the smoky gray, of the war. What was left of home was with him in the car. The four boxes. The two valises. Miriam.
As they entered the highway, joining the racing, swerving, honking cars and trucks and motorcycles, Sam took a deep breath, closed his eyes and, although he didn’t believe in God anymore (well maybe just a little bit, but he definitely did not trust Him), he prayed that God would watch over them, and even though Sal Vito wasn’t Jewish, he included him in the prayer.
Opening his eyes, Sam took off his glasses, wiped them with the white handkerchief he kept in his pocket, and then focused his attention on Vito’s neck. A thick, red neck. A familiar neck. Not a Jewish neck. A Polish neck. Januscz’s neck. That’s whose neck it was. The neck of the foreman of his father’s factory. Such a friendly man, giving him candies and pieces of leather. What happened to him? Sam remembered the whispered conversations between Januscz and his father. Offers of money if the foreman would hide the family. More than money, ownership of the factory. It was just for a few months. Surely the war would end in a few months and Januscz would become a rich man. Nothing came of this deal- making. Was the man still alive? Why shouldn’t he be alive, him and his wife and his Polish children? Of course he was alive. Maybe the factory was now his. The factory and everything else he could get his hands on. Their furniture, silverware, oil paintings, oriental rugs, crystals, and the piano. His sister Esther’s piano. What did Januscz do with the piano, did he sell it? No, more likely he used it for firewood, chopped it to pieces with his big Polish hands.
How trusting this driver was to let someone sit so close behind him. In an instant Sam could kill him. Not that this was what he would do. Kill the driver? Had he lost his mind? Of course he would not do such a thing. But it could be done. In an instant. One did not even need a gun.
Sam leaned forward, his breath on the driver’s neck. “Would you care for a cookie?”
“Sure.” Vito took his hand off the steering wheel and reached into the bag Sam offered him. “Homemade,” he said, chewing on the cookie. “I can tell.”
How could he tell? As a child, Sam hadn’t been able to tell if the cakes and tortes and rugelach that the Polish servant girl brought to the table were baked in their home or in a bakery. He knew his mother, a woman of culture, did not bake, and of course Miriam with
her intelligence and education would have nothing to do with cookie making.
“My wife, she bakes these kind of cookies. She’s a great cook. Almost as good as my mother.” Vito took another cookie from the bag.
How friendly this driver has become, Sam thought. The boxes, the valises, the warm soda, all matters of the past. A man easily bought with a cookie.
Sam offered the bag to Miriam. “You’d like a cookie?”
“Sam, please, put the bag away. I can’t stand the smell.”
“You’ve been going to the Catskills for a few years?” Vito asked.
“A few,” Sam said, remembering the lie Miriam had told about the fictitious driver from last year.
The idea of going to the Catskills had come from a friend, Chaim Zilber. “I heard it’s a place where people go for a little rest,” Chaim had said. “And the forests, they say the forests are exactly like the forests in the mountains of Poland.”
How could there be two places in the world that were exactly alike? But maybe the smell of the trees would be the same, and maybe there would be birds and deer like in Poland. Sam remembered how he had walked barefoot as a boy through the forest, enjoying the earth beneath his feet, and then his father shouting, “Put on your shoes. No one has died.” He had not known, he was only six or seven, that walking barefoot was a sign of mourning. This time his father would not see him taking off his shoes and socks, walking barefoot in the forests of the Catskills.
Miriam wouldn’t be walking with him. She was not well. The doctor had said that it was not unusual for a woman in her sixth month to still feel sick, but Sam knew it was because of the war. She had experienced what they had all experienced – the loss, the starvation, the terror of death at any moment – but Sam knew there was more. Something had happened to her. He would find her staring out the window at the fire escape or lying in bed in the middle of the day, a towel covering her face. When he touched her shoulder, whispered, “Miriam, what is it? Tell me. I am here with you,” she’d look at him as if he were a stranger. “Let me be,” she’d say, and so he let her be. At night, she woke him with her screams. He’d ask if she’d had a bad dream, and she’d answer that there were no dreams, that she no longer dreamt.
She’d never gotten to the sixth month in a pregnancy. After two miscarriages, she told Sam that she knew there was something wrong with her, something that couldn’t be fixed. “What, Miriam, what is it? We will find a way,” he’d said. But she insisted that no, there was no way, and that she could not try again.
And yet, she tried again.
No, he couldn’t leave Miriam and go walk in the forest. He’d find a tree next to the bungalow. They’d sit together and talk about the good air and the quiet. Then Miriam would take a little nap, and he would write in his notebook. Once in a while, he’d put the notebook face down on his lap and he too would close his eyes and for a moment, just a moment, he would think, Oh how my sister would have enjoyed this, and little Frieda, her daughter, she would have run on the grass shouting, “Look at me!” as she did somersaults. The sun would shine on her. And then he remembered her frozen body – so small – as he put her into the ground carefully, as if he were putting her in her bed, and he had to stop. He stared at the back of Vito’s head. What a life this man must have, a long unbroken thread. Not like his own life, cut in the middle, and then begun again with nothing holding the two pieces together.
Miriam gave a little moan. “I need to get out of this car for a few minutes. I don’t feel good.”
“Mr. Vito, maybe we can stop?” Sam asked.
“No stopping here. I stop, I get a big fine. It’s five minutes to the Red Apple. We can stop there.”
Sam took Miriam’s hand. “Five minutes. Miriam, just five minutes.” He looked out the window for this apple tree that would allow the driver to stop the car, but instead of a tree, there was a white sign with red lettering welcoming them to the Red Apple Rest.
Miriam was out of the car and hurrying through the parking lot before Sam could say, “Wait, I’ll go with you.”
“I think I’ll go in too,” Vito said.
He could follow them, but Miriam would be back soon. Best to keep an eye on the boxes and valises. He got out of the car, stretched one leg then the other, took a whiff of the air.
“A good place for a knish.”
“Excuse me?” Sam hadn’t seen the man approach. A man dressed in short pants named after some country. Cuba? No not Cuba. Bermuda. Miriam had suggested he buy such pants when they went shopping for their bungalow colony clothes. “It’s a vacation, why not, Sam?” Well, it might be a vacation, but he had no intention of strolling around wearing short pants.
“A knish,” the man in the Bermuda pants said. “Those Red Apple potato knishes are the best. Am I right?”
How was he to know if the man was right? A knish might have been good, given that he’d barely had breakfast that morning. A slice of toast with not even a little butter. A glass of tea. That’s all his nerves had permitted. Then the cookie that the grocer had given him.
“The kasha is good too, but the knish is much better. Jack Lifschitz. A pleasure to meet you. Ladies’ handbags and fine accessories.”
A seller of ladies’ handbags and – vus iz dus? – fine accessories.
“Sam Goldberg.” Should he add, “Poems and fine prose?” A seller – though there were few buyers – of poems and the occasional prosaic piece, sometimes very fine, other times worthy of the trash.
“So where you off to, Grossinger’s?”
He hadn’t heard of the town of Grossinger’s. “Monticello.”
That had been Chaim Zilber’s recommendation. Chaim, who had never been to the Catskill Mountains himself, did not know how to go about finding a bungalow colony, but Sam had learned that the way to find things in America was to dial O for operator, so he had called the operator and asked for Monticello information.
“You need Sullivan County. I’ll transfer you.”
“Sullivan County Information,” the next operator said.
“I’m looking for a bungalow colony in Monticello.”
“Name, please.”
“I don’t have a name. Maybe you can tell me what there is.”
“You want me to read you all the names? I have over a hundred names here, sir.”
“Maybe you can start from the A’s. I’m sure I’ll find something there.”
“Alright, sir. We have Aarons, we have Abelstein. Should I continue?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“We have Abrahamson, we have Abramoff. Anything yet?”
“One more, please.”
“Okay, one more. Ackerman. How’s that?”
“I’ll take it,” Sam had said.
“We’re going to Ackerman’s Bungalow Colony in Monticello,” Sam informed Jack Lifschitz.
“Ackerman’s? Never heard of it.”
“It’s in Monticello.”
“Never heard of a bungalow colony called Ackerman’s in Monticello, and I’ve been coming up here for over twenty years. What kind of facilities you got over at Ackerman’s Bungalow Colony?”
“They have very fine facilities.”
He hadn’t inquired about any facilities when he spoke on the telephone with Mrs. Ackerman. Miriam had warned him that the call would cost over a dollar a minute. “Try to get it done as fast as possible. Look at your watch and hang up before the minute is over.”
Between looking at his watch and the static that made it almost impossible to hear the woman, the best he could do was shout, “July 10, three weeks, how much,” and Mrs. Ackerman shouting, “Yes, yes,” and then him shouting, “The price, please, the price,” and her shouting, “Twenty.” He was about to hang up, it was well past the minute, but Miriam had told him to ask about a driver. That information had cost at least a minute and a half of a long- distance call. Spending more money to inquire about facilities was out of the question. In any event, he didn’t need facilities, just a table in the kitchen or on the porch where he could sit down with his notebook and pen.
“We will have everything we need,” he had told Miriam when she asked what there was at the bungalow colony. “Guaranteed.” Why did he have to say, “guaranteed”? He always tended to overdo it when he lied. Not that he made a habit of lying, only when he was selling encyclopedias and sometimes just to reassure Miriam. A habit he had picked up during the war – this lying – telling his parents that all would be well, that one day they would look back at all of it with a shake of the head and a sad laugh.
“The usual entertainment?” Lifschitz asked.
The only American entertainment Sam knew about was at a place called Radio City Music Hall. He hadn’t seen any radio or any hall but there was music and dancing and a movie. He didn’t understand why the audience was laughing and clapping, but he supposed there was a reason. He’d spent his time during the entertainment inspecting the row of people in front of him, a mother, a father, two children, and a grandmother. Inspecting and selecting. Right, right, left, left, left.
“Yes,” Sam said. “The usual entertainment.”
“So where you from?”
“Manhattan.”
“You weren’t born in Manhattan.”
“Poland.”
“Oh yeah? I’m from Lvov. Came here when I was two. Got lucky.
Those knishes, maybe not as good as back home, but still pretty close.”
What did this lucky handbag salesman know of back home? If only there was such a place where his parents, his sister, little Frieda were – back home, alive – wondering where Sam had disappeared to and when he would return.
“Treat yourself to a knish,” Lifschitz said. “The potato are the best. And enjoy yourself at Hackermen’s.”
“Ackerman’s.”
“Like I said, never heard of it.”
Sam watched the man get into a car and drive away, and as he thought, of course a man like Lifschitz knew how to drive, he didn’t need to hire a driver, Sal Vito returned carrying a blue and white bag with the word “Wise” on it.
“Potato chip?” Vito offered.
Sam took a chip. A salty, greasy food, this wise American food.
“Wife not back yet?” Vito asked.
“You didn’t see her inside?”
“Nope. We better get back on the road before traffic gets heavy. Don’t want to get stuck in a jam somewhere. You could wind up sitting for hours with the engine running, using up gas. Once got stuck for four hours on the George Washington Bridge. Four hours. A guy was threatening to jump. I thought after a while, with all due respect, jump already and let the rest of us get on with our lives. I tell you, I was trapped like a bat in hell.”
An interesting metaphor, trapped like a bat in hell. If he were sitting with his notebook with time to mull it over, maybe he would use it in a poem. Trapped like a bat in hell. No, not possible. You can’t be trapped in the place where you live.
“I’m sure my wife will be back soon,” Sam said, not sure at all. Trapped like a man waiting for his wife who has disappeared into a white building with a big red apple on top. If only he hadn’t decided that these boxes and valises were so important that he let Miriam go in alone. These stupid, unimportant boxes and valises filled with what? Nothing that he would miss. Nothing that he cared about. A few papers, some clothes. It could all be replaced. And what couldn’t be replaced, what did it matter as long as he had Miriam? The one photograph of his parents with Esther and Frieda – the four of them in the forest that surrounded the family’s summer dacha, Esther and their father leaning against a tree, Frieda sitting on her grandmother’s lap – if that were lost forever, he could still close his eyes and see them.
“What happened to the man?” Sam asked Vito.
“What man?”
“The one on the bridge.”
“He finally decided to jump.”
“God almighty, and then?”
“And then the traffic started moving. Here she is,” Sal Vito said, pointing.
Finally. “What took so long?” Sam asked.
“The line was unbelievable. And the pushing and shoving, you’d think these women had all taken leave of their senses.” Miriam settled into the back seat.
As the car got back on the highway, Sam looked out the window at the passing signs. He could read the words, the letters were so big: Kutscher’s, Brown’s, and, oh yes, Grossinger’s, and there was the face of that comedian, the funny one, Jerry Lewis.
“Is it okay if I open the window, Mr. Vito?”
“Sure, go ahead. I’ll turn off the air conditioner.”
Yes, it was like in Poland, the same sweet smell of the forest, and the trees, he hadn’t seen so many trees since the war. When they opened the doors of the train that took them from the ghetto, there had been trees. It was winter then, not like now, and the trees were bare. He remembered how the branches reached out like the bony arms of skeletons, grabbing at him.
And there had been music when he arrived at Auschwitz. Even with the barking of the dogs, the shouts and screams, he could hear the orchestra welcoming them. He had stood still, just for a moment, and listened. What was that piece? Not one of Esther’s favorite Chopin waltzes. Wagner. Yes, that’s what the orchestra had played. Hearing the music, he’d thought maybe the worst was over, and for a moment he was back in his home, lying on the sofa, listening to his sister playing the piano, while he made up little poems with rhyming words.
None of his poetry rhymed now. Rhymes were for children and fools. Fools like that man in the parking lot who needed only a potato knish to be happy. He turned to Miriam. “I met a man by the name of Jack Lifschitz.”
“The name sounds familiar. We know a Lifschitz, but not Jack,” Miriam said.
“I can assure you, this man is not related to anyone we know. Said he never heard of Ackerman’s. He kept asking about the bungalow colony, as if I was telling him about some place that didn’t exist. A fantasy place, a figment of my imagination.”
“Ridiculous. You talked to the owner, the wife.”
“Exactly. A nice woman. Trustworthy.” Why did he have to add that? Wouldn’t it have been enough to say that yes, he had talked to her and yes, she existed? How did he know if she was trustworthy? How did he know if she even existed, this woman on the other end of the phone? He could barely hear her in that rushed conversation. Maybe it was a wrong number and he wound up in a conversation with a woman pretending to be the owner of a bungalow colony. What information did she really give him? Nothing about the facilities and just the price of the bungalow. Easy enough to fabricate. But wait, she gave him the name of the driver, Sal Vito, and the man might have his faults, but he did exist. “You know the owners, Mr. Vito?”
“Yup. They talk English like you, but the accent is a little different. I got a good ear for such things.”
An accent? Sam didn’t remember any accent. If there had been, he would have heard it immediately. The woman had said, “Hello,” and “Yes, yes,” and “Twenty,” and “Mr. Salvatore Vito.” What with the cost and the noise, he hadn’t even asked for Vito’s phone number, he was so anxious to get off the phone. “What kind of accent?”
“Not like yours. More like in those war movies. A German accent.”
“A German- German accent? A Jewish- German accent?”
“Like I said, a German accent like in the movies.”
And with that, Sal Vito drove up to the sign, a sign made of large sheet metal hammered onto a thick slab of wood attached to a stake driven into the ground, red with black letters, a sign announcing, “Akermann’s Bungalow Colony, Monticello, New York,” and right below, in somewhat smaller print, “Swimming Pool. Casino. Day Camp.”
“Sam, did you know about the day camp? We don’t need the day camp,” Miriam said. “Did we pay for that?”
“For what?”
“The camp.”
A couple sat on the porch of a small house at the end of a long driveway. Their faces were a blur. Their clothes were gray or brown, maybe navy blue or black. It was hard for Sam to tell, even when he leaned forward and squinted. There was a woman. He knew it was a woman because she wore a skirt or dress. The man wore trousers. Next to him sat an animal, a dog, that began barking.
There was music coming from the house. The music played softly, but Sam could hear it. He had no problems with his hearing, none whatsoever. And of course he recognized the piece immediately. It was the same Wagner that the orchestra had played when they exited the trains at Auschwitz.
Sam remembered the bitter December cold. How he had shivered and stomped his feet, bringing his hands to his mouth, blowing on his fists. And the sudden fear. What if he died, who would tell his family what had happened to him? He had looked up and down the line of men, searching for someone who might know him or at least a stranger he could tell his name to.
It was when he looked over at the line of women and children that he noticed the woman. It was the coat she wore – gray with silver buttons and a fur collar – a coat meant for an afternoon in a cafe or a visit to a concert. How had such a coat survived? He had watched as she pulled at the coat, struggling to hide her pregnant belly.
It was as if she knew – they both knew – that the coat was all that was left to save her. Why else would she be wrestling with the coat, and why else, watching her, would he suddenly stand up straight, head erect, square shoulders, the very picture of a healthy, strong man willing and able to embrace the liberation of work that the sign at Auschwitz promised?
But maybe she was cold on that winter day, and maybe he imagined that he suddenly stood up straight. Maybe neither of them understood what the shouts of left and right meant.
Sam watched as the woman reached the doctor. The man glanced at the belly that the elegant coat had failed to conceal. “Links!” he shouted and pointed to the left. When it was his turn, the doctor looked him up and down, stared at his face. Sam could see the question in the man’s eyes. It was the beauty of those eyes that Sam re membered, eyes the color of turquoise, and then the voice that shouted in that coarse language. “Rechts!”
“Sam,” Miriam grabbed his arm. “Did we pay for the camp?”
“Camp?” What was she talking about? “What camp, where?”
“Here, Sam, at this place.”
This place – this couple sitting, waiting for them with their barking dog and their music – what place was this? Sam looked down at Miriam’s right hand cradling her belly.
No. No links and rechts this time. They would not take Miriam and the baby – their baby! – from him. They could keep their barking dog and their music, but they would not take his family and they would not banish him from this forest. He would not be driven up, and he would not be driven out. He would walk on his own two feet and he would find out who these two people were and what they wanted.
“Mr. Vito, stop the car.”
“What? But we’re here. I’ll drive you right up to the entrance. No need to get out.”
“Sam, what’s going on?” Miriam asked.
“Stop. I’m getting out. Miriam, wait here. Do not leave the car under any circumstances.”
“Sam, what is happening?”
“Mr. Goldberg, wait.”
He did not answer and he did not wait. He shut the car door and began to walk. The gravel crunched under the soles of his black shoes, and with each step the shoes got dustier. It had been five years since he had walked on a road like this. He had worn boots then. Unpolished, cracked, frayed laces on one boot, no laces on the other, the black boots had been given to him by the nurse from the Polish Red Cross. Four months after liberation, when he was finally well enough to leave, he stood in line with the others. There were no shouts in German, no gunshots, no barking dogs, no Wagner. Only a line that ended with a table and a woman dressed in white. When she smiled he could see that she was missing a tooth.
“Where is it that Pan wishes to go?” Pan. It had been six years since he had been called sir.
“I will be returning to Lodz.”
“You are sure? There are other places we can take you.”
Yes, he was sure.
“As you wish. You know how to get there?”
He noticed she said “there” not “home.”
“I think so.” But really what did he know, the son of a rich father, about walking in fields and forests? When had he ever walked from Auschwitz to Lodz?
“It is not so far. Less than two hundred kilometers. You need to walk to the north.”
So close. He had not realized how close.
“In that case, Pan Goldberg, if you are walking, one minute.” She took the shoes she had given him. When she came back, she held two black boots in her arms. They left a mark on her white uniform. When she handed him the boots did she say, “For your journey home,” or did he imagine it?
“Perhaps you also have a pencil?” A pencil for his poems.
“A pencil, yes, I think I can find a pencil for you. Here you are. And your papers. You must not forget your papers.”
“Thank you.” He took the papers that returned his name to him. Samuel Goldberg. Imprisoned in Auschwitz from December 1943 to January 1945. Born April 19, 1912. Father’s name Avraham. Mother’s name Mina. Jew.
He left through the gates of Auschwitz. He carried a bundle filled with knockwurst, salami, bread, butter, sugar. He wore a faded blue shirt over his gaunt torso, a rope around his pants to hold them up. In his pockets were a few zloty, his papers, and the pencil. It was almost summer when he walked out of Auschwitz. Liberated.
He knew where north was from the rising and setting of the sun. He could see the sky and the light filtering through the leaves of the
trees. He could hear the singing of the birds. Was there no sky in Auschwitz, no light, no birds? All he could remember was the gray of the smoke and the noise of the gunshots.
When the sun set, he went into the forest and looked for a place of respite under the trees. He ate some of the food from his bundle. Even though he was hungry, he made sure not to eat too much. Hunger didn’t bother him. He was used to hunger. After his meal, he lay down on the ground, and looked up at the sky. He searched for the moon and stars.
He waited for the words of poems, his hand on the pencil, ready to write them down. But all that arrived were the names. Sometimes the Yis’ga’dal v’yis’kadash of the Mourner’s Kaddish slipped in when he said his parents’ and sister’s names but he stopped himself. He didn’t know. He had no proof. Only with Frieda’s name did he allow the solace of the Kaddish.
“Mama, Papa, Esther,” he said sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a shout, waiting for them to come running to him. He imagined their cries of “Samek, you are alive,” and his father saying to his mother, “I told you we’d find him,” and how Esther would hug him tightly.
How could it be otherwise? Someone must have survived. It wasn’t possible he was all alone in the world.
He saw other skeletal beings on the road, carrying bundles. Some walked slowly, using tree branches as canes. Others walked quickly, as if someone waited for them and they must not be late. He greeted them, first in Polish, then in Yiddish. They asked if he’d seen their mother, father, husband, maybe their wife. No, he hadn’t. And when they pressed him – my father was short, tall, a scholar, a rabbi, my wife was a beauty, blue eyes, hair the color of honey – he said, “No. I’m sorry, but maybe you saw a woman, Mina Goldberg, her husband, Avraham Goldberg, their daughter, her name is Esther?” “No,” they would say. “We’re sorry.”
They asked where he was going and invited him to join them, but he chose to walk alone. It was hard for him to be with others. When offered a ride by peasants traveling in a wagon, he didn’t take it. “No, thank you,” he said. He had to make his way on foot. It took him ten days. He counted the days on his fingers. Ten days to return home and to find that home no longer existed.
He was the only one who had survived, the sole mourner, the only one left to say Kaddish.
Sam remembered when he was eight years old and his grandfather died. The man had died a simple death in his own bed. A lucky man, his grandfather. His father had taken him to the shul to recite the prayer of mourning. When they entered, the men in their prayer shawls, more than the required minyan of ten, surrounded them, consoling, comforting, and then chanting the Mourner’s Kaddish with them. He had imagined that the prayer carried the body of his grandfather wrapped in white to heaven.
There was no minyan for Sam. No funerals, no shiva, no shul, no reciting of the Kaddish. No lighting of the Yahrzeit candle commemorating the anniversary of death. Except for Frieda, he didn’t know when any of them had died. Only that they were dead.
Oh Frieda, Friedalah, Tayereh neshama. Dear soul.
Mama. Papa, Esther.
Who will I call when the baby is born? Who will shout Mazel Tov?
The first words of the Kaddish escaped from his mouth, Yis’ga’dal v’yis’kadash sh’may rabbo. Loud and clear, the way his father had said them that day in the shul, b’ olmo dee’vro chir’usay.
But now it wasn’t only his voice. There were the voices of his father and his grandfather, the voices of his Uncle Nahum and his Uncle Jakob. The voices of the men from the shul. Walking with him, chanting, hu ya’aseh sholom olaynu. May He bring peace to us.
And as Sam walked towards the couple, the woman got up from her chair. “Hello, Mr. Goldberg,” she called to him. “Welcome.”
But all Sam heard were the sweet voices of the dead.
Paulette K. Fire has published a short story in The Pinch. Her essays have appeared in Harvard Review, Carve Magazine, Jewish Literary Journal, and Lilith.