In the Beginning Page 10

  The song ended. There was a burst of applause. My brother, startled, took the bottle from his mouth and let out a small cry. I saw Eddie Kulanski’s father turn his head and say something to the woman. She threw back her head and laughed. Then her hands moved swiftly across the front of her body, describing the shape of a cross.

  “Saul.” I tugged at his shirt and spoke in a very low voice.

  He looked at me over the piece of meat he was carefully putting into his mouth.

  “That’s Eddie Kulanski.” I felt frightened just saying his name.

  He stared.

  “And his mother and father. See how big his father is.”

  Saul sat very still and looked and said nothing. At that moment Eddie Kulanski and his mother and father turned and went back up the path and disappeared into the wood.

  “Why were they here, Saul?”

  “For a picnic,” Saul said.

  “Isn’t he big?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see what I meant? About fighting?”

  He nodded and gave me a dark look. His glasses had slipped down along the bridge of his nose.

  “There are so many places in the zoo and the meadow they could go for a picnic. Why did they come here?”

  “I don’t know. Take it easy, Davey.”

  “You see? It was an accident. You see?”

  “I see.”

  “I hate accidents. Why does God make accidents?”

  “Take it easy, Davey. Keep your voice down.”

  “He scares me, Saul. I’m very scared seeing him like that. Suddenly, like a ghost. I wish Abraham would break his head.”

  “Davey—”

  “You think the Golem could follow them and find out what they’re saying?”

  He looked at me. Slowly, he pushed his glasses back up along the bridge of his nose.

  “I don’t like him, Saul. He’s not a nice person. Are all goyim like that?”

  “Your friend Tony isn’t like that.”

  “No. You’re right. He isn’t like that. You’re right, Saul. But Eddie Kulanski really scares me, Saul. He makes me feel more terrible than Tony Savanola makes me feel good.”

  Saul looked at me and said nothing.

  My father, who had been talking quietly to my mother, now turned to me. After a moment he said, “Why aren’t you eating? You have not touched your sandwich. You will have muscles like a woman when you grow up.”

  I ate slowly. My eyes hurt. Someone was talking to me. I raised my head. It was Mr. Bader.

  “Hello,” he said. “You’re so busy eating and thinking you don’t even hear me.”

  I tried to smile at him.

  “I haven’t seen you in a long time, David. How are you feeling? Have you grown since I saw you last? I think you have.”

  I shrugged. He frightened me a little now. The calm voice and the smooth gentlemanly manner and the small black skullcap and the brown hair meticulously parted in the middle and the very dark, penetrating eyes; and all that traveling to strange places where Jews were hated; and all those people he had talked to; and the photograph.

  “It was a nice surprise seeing you here,” he said in his soft calm voice. He had bent down to speak to me. Now he hitched up his sharply pressed trousers and sat on his haunches and rested his manicured hands on his knees. His craggy face was deeply tanned. “Your father told me you’ve been ill. I was sorry to hear that.”

  I hung my head and was quiet. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Saul lying on his blanket. His eyes were partly open and he was watching me.

  “I saw your grandmother,” Mr. Bader said. “She is very eager to meet her American grandsons. She sends you very special love.”

  I acknowledged the words with a nod. I never thought too much about my relatives in Europe. They were simply there, like the teachers I was supposed to have when I started attending yeshiva after the summer, dim unformed presences I might meet in a future I could barely perceive or understand.

  “Is my grandmother sick?” I asked.

  “She is better,” he said.

  “Will she come to America?”

  “We all hope so.”

  “Did you see my father’s parents?”

  “Yes. In Lemberg. They are well.”

  “Were you able to recognize my father’s friends from the photograph?”

  He looked at me. His eyes widened momentarily, then became very narrow. He brushed a speck of dust from his jacket sleeve and put his fingers to his bow tie. He looked around casually. Then he looked at me.

  “How old are you, David?” he asked in a very low, calm voice.

  “Almost six.”

  “Well, you’re a big boy. And a very bright boy.” He paused. “Are you big and bright enough to believe that you never saw the photograph you say you saw?”

  “I saw it,” I said. “Why do you all say I didn’t see it?”

  “David, you have to be very big and bright to believe me when I say that you did not see it.”

  I looked away from him. He was really frightening me now. His eyes had a sharp glittering darkness and the bones in his face seemed to have hardened perceptibly as he spoke. How could I be big enough and old enough not to have seen a photograph everyone knew I had seen? I did not understand what he was saying. I saw Saul gazing at me from his prone position on the blanket. Most of the people seemed to have finished their lunch and were walking about, talking loudly and laughing. My parents and aunt and uncle were surrounded by friends, all of them listening intently to what a short, thin-faced, dark-haired man was saying about stocks and bonds and something called futures and margin. I saw another strange couple come from the wood into the clearing. They looked around, turned, and went back into the wood. From somewhere in the crowd the woman with the contralto voice began to sing a soft, sad Polish song. Her voice drifted through the clearing and mingled with the laughter and the noise and the excited talk about stocks and bonds and futures and margin.

  I felt Mr. Bader put his hand on my arm. “You weren’t listening, David. You have a habit of not listening. Did your father ever tell you that you have such a habit?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “It’s not a good habit, David.”

  I was quiet. I wished he would go away. I could only breathe through my mouth now and my throat had begun to feel dry and tight. I wished he would go away and leave me alone. I wanted to go home and lie in my bed beneath my sheet and look into my quiet white world. I would brush my eyelids against the sheet. That was a good feeling.

  Instead of going away, Mr. Bader sat down.

  “That’s an uncomfortable position. There are people in the world who can squat like that for hours. Did you know that? I saw an Arab woodcarver sit like that for half a day once. Amazing. But it’s not for me. Listen, David. I am going to find out just how big a boy you really are. Since it was my fault that you accidentally saw that photograph, I am going to have to explain something to you. We’ll keep it to ourselves, all right?”

  He was speaking in a very low, urgent tone. I could barely hear him. From somewhere in the clearing came a shout and a burst of laughter.

  “I don’t think your father would like me to tell you this. He prefers—how shall I phrase it?—secrecy to openness, even with his own family, especially with a six-year-old boy. Let me see if I can explain it to you in a way that will help you to understand it. Lemberg was captured by Russians in the second year of the war. Then the army of Pilsudski captured it back from the Russians. The part of Poland where your mother and father lived, the part called Eastern Galicia, had been under the control of Austria. The Austrian army gave the Jews weapons to protect themselves in case of pogroms by Poles. Then the Austrians left Poland. And there were pogroms. Your father had been a very good soldier in Pilsudski’s army. He organized his friends in and around Lemberg and they fought back. They saved Jewish lives and killed Polish hooligans. Then the Polish government ordered all the people to turn in their weapons. When that photograp
h was taken it was illegal for anyone who wasn’t a policeman or a soldier to possess a weapon. The Jews in that photograph were breaking Polish law. There could be problems. Do you understand? Is all this too much for a six-year-old head?”

  “Why did they take the photograph, Mr. Bader?”

  “Do you understand what I just said to you?”

  “Some of it. The part about the Austrian army and the weapons. Yes.”

  “That is all you need to understand. It is better if no one knows about that photograph.”

  “But why did—”

  “You weren’t listening to me, David.”

  “I was, Mr. Bader.”

  “Good. Then you understand that you never saw such a photograph.” I was quiet.

  “I hope you understand that clearly, David.”

  Some people in the group were clapping in rhythm to a song. Along a stretch of grass near the far edge of the clearing six or seven men had begun to kick around a soccer ball. My father was there. He had removed his jacket and shirt and straw hat and had on his white undershirt and trousers. I saw the muscles in his chest and arms. He ran lightly and effortlessly back and forth across the grass, kicking the soccer ball, passing it, taking passes from others. He seemed to glide over the ground with the kind of ease I often saw in the zoo animals as they moved about in their pens and cages: smooth silken gliding movements that met no resistance from earth or air. Eddie Kulanski moved like that. I wondered what it must feel like to be able to move easily and freely. I almost never had that feeling now for more than a few days at a time. And even then I did not fully have it because I always knew I would soon be losing it. Yes, I had it when I was on my tricycle. That must be the feeling: smooth and at ease and the wind caressing your face, often even tickling it a little the way my billy goat tickled the palm of my hand. But I tired easily on my tricycle. No, I never really had that free smooth feeling when my feet were on the ground.

  “People tell me your father was an excellent soccer player in Poland,” Mr. Bader said quietly. “He led a team in Lemberg. They say he would play fiercely.” He was gazing at my father with the same expression of admiration that I had noticed on his face during the wet April day I had seen the photograph. “Those are his very good friends, the men he is playing with. They played as children in the courtyards of their homes in Lemberg and in the fields and forests. He helped them come to America. He has strong loyalties, your father. They all have strong loyalties. Do you understand that word, David?”

  I nodded hesitantly.

  “Your father has a habit of referring to it as his job. I call it loyalties. Duties and loyalties.” He looked away from the game at the sky. A mass of dark cloud had covered the sun. The air in the clearing was suddenly cool. He gazed down at me and touched his fingers to his bow tie. “Sometimes I have the feeling you understand a great deal more than you let everyone think you understand. Is that true, David?”

  I did not know what to say.

  “I suppose that is not a wise question to have asked. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  “Was the photograph really taken at a wedding, Mr. Bader?”

  “I don’t want to talk any more about that photograph. I will answer your question and that will be all. The answer to your question is yes, the photograph was taken at a wedding.”

  “Did you grow up with my father?”

  “No. I grew up in a very big city. Warsaw. I came to America when I was fourteen. Look at him. Look at your father. How he moves! He was the fastest runner in his neighborhood when he was young. So your uncle tells me.”

  “Was he frightened by goyim?”

  He looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “Did he have to run away from goyim?”

  “Ah, I see. No, your father didn’t run from goyim. They would run from him. I think your father is the only Jew I know who is truly not afraid of goyim. He hates them and is not afraid of them. He said to me once the only way to live with goyim is to know them thoroughly and once you know them you cannot help but hate them. Have you ever heard him say that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was certain you had. He does not keep it a secret.”

  “Do you hate goyim, Mr. Bader?”

  “I don’t hate anyone, David, because no one has ever really hurt me. I am a fortunate Jew.” He spoke in an intimate manner. “I was fortunate to have been in America and not in Europe during the war. Sometimes I feel guilty about that. Do you understand what I mean? No, I suppose not.”

  I gazed at the small group of players. Most of the people in the clearing had moved off their blankets and had gathered near the game. Eight men were playing now. My father seemed to be everywhere at once on the length of grass that had become the soccer field. The sun had burned through the clouds and I could see it glistening on the sweat that covered his face. As he raced and kicked he shouted instructions to his teammates in Yiddish; once he shouted in the language I thought was Polish. I heard the thud of his shoe against the ball. He ran with it, dodging and sliding through opponents, doing little dances around it, sidestepping neatly the charge of the tall man with the small eyes and the large nose who had held both a knife and a gun in the photograph. Then, near the blanket that served as a makeshift goal, he feinted to the left, twirled like a dancer around the ball, and sent it off to the right with a swift, clean, expertly aimed kick that shot it past the head of the goalie, the thin-faced, dark-haired little man of bonds and futures, and off into the trees beyond the clearing. There was a loud cheer and handclapping.

  “David?”

  I turned away from the game. I was beginning to feel strangely disturbed by the frenetic activity of the players. My aunt and uncle had moved off their blanket to a point closer to the game. My brother had fallen asleep and my mother sat near him on the blanket, a dreamy smile on her face. She seemed in another time and place. That almost always happened to her when we came to this clearing; she closed her eyes and drifted off on a journey through distant memories. Saul lay very still, watching me through slitted eyes. From the playing field came a shout and a cheer. But I did not turn to it; my head hurt badly now—from the noise of the game, the confusing words of Mr. Bader, the taut sensation I had in my arms and chest from watching my father, and from the illness I knew would soon come upon me.

  “David, you aren’t listening to me. People talk to you and you drift away into your own world. That’s a bad habit.”

  I murmured an apology.

  “How are you teaching yourself to read?” he asked.

  I stared at him.

  “Your mother tells me you have begun to read Hebrew and Yiddish though no one is teaching you. How are you doing that?”

  I shrugged a shoulder.

  “What’s that, David?” He imitated my motion.

  I was quiet.

  “You have no answer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s better. ‘I don’t know’ is an answer. It interests me very much that you are learning to read without a teacher. Are you reading English too?”

  I shrugged a shoulder. Then I said, “Yes.”

  His dark eyes glittered and I thought I saw a smile play briefly on his lips.

  There was another shout and cheer from the field. I looked down at the blanket, feeling surfeited with talk and noise and pain. I wanted Mr. Bader to leave. Then I heard myself say abruptly, “Do you ever have accidents, Mr. Bader?” I listened to myself ask the question and I could not remember having wanted to ask it. I had no memory at all of any intent to ask that question. The question had appeared suddenly as if it had existed secretly within me all along and had decided now to make its own search for an answer.

  “Of course I’ve had accidents, David.”

  “All the time?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you do something and think there’s nothing bad in it, and you hurt people and kill animals and birds?”

  He did not answer. But he was pee
ring at me very closely.

  “I have accidents all the time. I killed a canary and a dog by accident. And I fall and hurt myself. And I almost started a fire once in our kitchen. And I almost fell out of my window. And I tripped climbing into a trolley car and cut my lip. And I fell over backward in my chair in the kitchen and cut my tongue. There was a lot of blood.”

  “You do have accidents,” he murmured. “You ought to be careful.”

  “I’m very careful, Mr. Bader.”

  “People have accidents all the time, David.”

  “So many accidents?”

  “No, not so many.”

  “I dream about it a lot, Mr. Bader.”

  “Yes?”

  “Every night I dream about having accidents. I have terrible dreams.”

  “Every night?”

  “Almost every night, Mr. Bader.”

  “Indeed? So many dreams?”

  “Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with me.”

  “Now, now,” he murmured.

  “It’s very scary to have that feeling, Mr. Bader.”

  He gazed at me, then nodded slowly. He seemed preoccupied for a moment, as if a memory had suddenly surfaced and overshadowed his awareness of the clearing and the conversation he was having. Then he said something but I was no longer listening. The question had receded and taken refuge once again deep within me. I could actually feel it darting into folds of darkness and disappearing into the comforting oblivion where I had wanted it to remain. Mr. Bader was talking to me but I could not listen. I saw my cousin raise his head slightly off his blanket, then put his head back down and close his eyes. From the soccer field came the sound of shoes against the leather ball, a sharp thud, and another cheer. “Good shot, Max!” someone shouted. “You’re a killer with those feet.”

  “You play like a goy, Max,” someone else shouted.

  “Why not?” another voice shouted back. “Who do you think taught him to play, his teachers in the yeshiva?”

  “David,” Mr. Bader said, insistently.