A Castle in Brooklyn(41)

Before he could protest, her voice hurried on, more urgently than before as she stared down at the table.

“It had become like a contest with us, Jacob at work during the day, upstairs in our bedroom, while I stayed downstairs on the couch at night. I did not mind it, not really. The bed, the hall, all the rooms on that level, held too many memories for me, memories which had turned sour in only a couple of months. After five days of this war of silence between us, he finally came down one evening, made two cups of tea, and set them on the kitchen table. At first, he only wanted to know why. And I told him all that had happened between us was a friend comforting another, and truly, Zalman, you were a comfort to me. You brought me out of the deep water so I could breathe again. You showed me how to live. You were the best friend a grieving mother could ask for.” She looked up at him then, noticed Zalman shaking his head, his lips tightly set.

“Anyway, I assured him of your loyalty and my love. He has forgiven me, it seems, but has yet to forgive himself. If he ever can at all.”

“No,” said Zalman, his voice low and groggy as if he had just awakened from sleep, “he hasn’t forgiven me, this I know. And he would be a fool to do so.”

“Oh, but that is the thing I came to you about,” she said, moving her tea, now cooled, to the side so she could lean across the table.

“You know Jacob perhaps better than anyone. He would never like my saying this, but he is, as my mother would say about my father, ‘a shtila marook,’ as silent as a stone, keeping all his worries locked inside. And because of this, I now know that he will one day understand and forgive you. You understand, I’m sure, how there’s something, a secret something, that happened to Jacob many years ago back in the old country. It took this tragedy to finally pry open his lips, so that he finally told me all. He now knows the cost of holding on to bitterness until it is too late, and he can’t afford to let that happen again. Oh, Zalman, I now know he will forgive you one day. Only please give him time. And then maybe you can even come back to us—our home. Not the same as things once were, never that. But maybe—”

The light shining off her auburn hair. A whiff of Shalimar.

The table shook suddenly. The unused utensils clattered as forks and spoons hit the ceramic tiled floor. Zalman was on his feet.

“No!” he exclaimed, not bothering to modulate his voice. “I don’t want your forgiveness. All I want is for you to leave me alone!” Pausing only long enough to collect his straw hat, Zalman left the restaurant.

He did not turn around to look at her that afternoon, but if he had, he would have seen her mouth agape, still in midsentence, more astonished than sad. He hated the possibility that his abrupt departure might have hurt her, but he knew that he could not stay one minute longer in her presence. If he had, he might have weakened, confessed his true feelings for her. He could never allow that to happen. So he tried to convince himself that it didn’t really matter how she felt. Nor did it matter that his curiosity about Jacob’s past was quenched. None of it did.

Now Zalman needed to forget the past, to build a new life for himself. He vowed never to spend the rest of his days as a voyeur, as he had in the pirates’ room during the war years, in the barn waiting for Jacob’s cue, watching Jacob’s marital happiness unfold. From now on, he would be a participant in his own life. Zalman’s life would be his own, and he would never look back.

As the train screeched to a slow halt and a blast of sunlight shot through the grimy window, Zalman scanned the platform for familiar faces. When his eye caught one in particular, he quickly stood up, gathered his things, and, just as the signal shattered the morning air, stepped off the train.





PART IV


CRACKS IN THE ROOF


EIGHTEEN



Jacob, 1934

Jacob let his hand slide down the flank of the great horse. The black hairs felt smooth and silky, falling away beneath his small palm, so that after a few moments of stroking, he was no longer afraid. Almost as if it sensed the child’s trepidation, the animal stood as still as the gray tombstones that lined the cemetery in the old town, its giant dark eye open, staring only at the winding path ahead.

Somewhere farther afield, he could hear them talking. The man’s voice gravelly, punctuated by a smoker’s cough, showed signs of a heavy accent, hers warm and familiar, like water tripping over rocks. The words themselves were incomprehensible. Business.

He decided not to pay them any attention, instead focusing on the horse beneath his hand. “Good boy. Such a good boy.”

It seemed like hours as Jacob and the horse remained together, but, in fact, it was only minutes since the man had trotted the horse out of its steel barn and coaxed the boy to come closer. Klaus, long past being a pony, was a workhorse and no longer a frivolous colt, would never harm a soul, the man assured. Only the flies that swarmed about Klaus’s coarse, bushy tail were subject to the occasional swat. But that was to be expected. And, in fact, when she called to the child, finally, Jacob startled, then ignored her, pretending not to hear. The horse was his friend now. Maybe his best friend in the world.

But she persisted in calling him, and when he heard a sharpness creep into her tone, he withdrew his hand as the horse, aware somehow of the unwelcome interruption, turned its head slowly and began sauntering up the hill.

He took his time trailing behind, and even when he had her in sight, crouching, her arms outstretched, expecting his ready embrace, he halted barely a foot away, his eyes fixing on the clouds of dust left in Klaus’s wake. She crunched her brow, faking a grimace. Jacob became excited as he got closer, but then he came to a halt as out of the corner of his eye, a short distance behind, he saw another. Mama flashed the man a broad, red-lipped smile. The man was tall, even taller than Jacob’s papa, and he stood now with hands clasped behind his back, the medals on his tan uniform sparkling in the early-afternoon sunshine. He was the owner of the big horse, and so, despite Jacob’s love for the animal, he felt a sudden stab of guilt sear through his chest.