A Castle in Brooklyn(46)

Despite these thoughts that raced through his head like a herd of cattle running this way and that, he couldn’t squelch the flood of hot tears that now seared his face. Unable to stop crying, he lay facedown on his bed. He thought his heart might break.

The next morning, after a long hot bath, Jacob walked into the kitchen and cut himself a slice of black bread. He found his papa sitting just as he was the day before, carving the finishing touches on the wooden bowl. He looked up at his son but said nothing.

After five minutes, when he had finished the piece and wiped the shards off the table, he turned to Jacob. His eyelashes were tinged with tears.

“You don’t understand. I know that you couldn’t help yourself, but Jacob, you should have held back your anger in the same way I have for these many long years.”

Jacob lifted his head, but unlike the elder, his eyes had become daggers.

“In the same way you have held back? Don’t make me laugh! What man allows his wife, the mother of his children, to sleep in another man’s bed? And let us not pretend any longer that this is business.” He spat out the word. “We both know what is going on here, how she sends him messages with her smiles, how she comes home spent after being away all night. And with a Nazi! Tell me, Papa, what could be more vile? Only you, the husband who stands by and watches this circus all in front of his nose! Leon saw it, and that’s why he escaped from this home, willing freely to go into the army. Anything but this! Because you see, dear Papa, we, Leon and I, have come to own your jealousy. So that leaves me to be the man of the house, opening my eyes to this fiasco even if you cannot!”

Jacob turned from him, stared down at his coffee, feeling exhausted by this eruption of anger that he felt could go on forever. Yet, just as his anxiety had reached a climax, his father, Shmuel, became calmer, more reticent. Finally, he spoke.

“Jacob, my son whom I love more than my own life, again I tell you that you do not understand. You must accept the truth that I have come to accept many years ago, when you still wore a toddler’s coat. There was a friend, a salesgirl at Mama’s place of business when she was a typist for the linen shop which has long since closed. This salesgirl, Mildred, had a friend whose sister had married a German who rose in the ranks. They needed a typist and there was a job. At first, your mama said no, but then food was running low, and soon she discovered the job was more than just typing, that she would have access to certain papers which might be helpful to the Allies. Well, I cannot say more. All I can tell you is that the defeats the enemy has seen on the front, the foiled plans, well, she and a group of brave women are responsible for that. So, yes, I have had to stand aside these years when I would have liked nothing better than to crush his neck with my hands. But yet, I have held back. It’s the price we have to pay for the greater good. And no one more than your mama. Jacob, she is a hero.”

With that, his father rose, took the bowl in hand, and not stopping to gauge his son’s reaction, went into his bedroom.

Jacob sat staring at the seat his papa had occupied only seconds earlier. So now he understood. But it was too late. His anger had already blinded him to any hint of a positive outcome. Late that night, soon after he heard the click of the key in the lock, and the tap of her heel on the kitchen linoleum, he had made up his mind. And so, as the first signs of light adorned the silent night sky, he wrapped what clothes he had in the gray-and-yellow afghan she had sewn for him. Jacob kneeled, pushed his treasures, the book of stamps and the large volume of fairy tales, securely underneath the bed and left. As he gently closed the apartment door, he remembered someone his parents had mentioned, a widow, an elderly Catholic woman who owned a farm on the outskirts of town. He would not see his mama that morning. He would not see his parents again. And it would be a year later, at war’s end, when he learned of Leon’s death in battle, his papa’s demise in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and his mother’s hanging as a traitor and conspirator. Only then did Jacob realize that he was an orphan.





NINETEEN



Esther, 1968

She listened patiently, and after he was done, not quite knowing what to do with her hands, which remained clasped firmly on her lap the whole time, she lifted them and ran her fingers through the thick strands of her hair as if to massage the information into her brain. Jacob hadn’t noticed, though, hadn’t turned toward her as he continued the tale in a low, barely audible monotone. And now he was moving slowly, almost ponderously, away from the window where he had remained during the course of his monologue. She was at the window, she realized then, the window where she had once stood as a young bride, staring ahead, imagining her life as it changed with the seasons, each year bringing new mysteries, new pleasures. The same window she stared through one sunny day in April, her eyes unbelieving, on the afternoon that would put an end to all those dreams.

It took her a few minutes, her eyes simply staring ahead. If anyone were to ask her about the weather outside, she could not have responded, feeling it was all the same to her now. She ran Jacob’s words through her mind but could only come to the same conclusion. He had hated his mother for associating with the Nazis, but more for turning on his father, a betrayal of them both. Whether she had her reasons—whether her actions were patriotic, even noble, didn’t matter. For Jacob, the betrayal was a sin that was unforgivable. But Jacob was no longer that impetuous young man who condemned others perhaps too easily. There was something inside her that convinced her that Jacob, the man she knew and loved, could now find forgiveness. Even for Zalman.