the next bite as tasty as the one before.”
They had broken bread, so questions were in order. “Your parents, God bless them,” said Israel. “They are alive?”
“My mother, aleha ha-shalom, died ten years ago. My father, alav ha-sholom, went two years after her.”
“I’m very sorry. May they rest in peace. Any brothers, sisters?”
“A brother. He lives in Berlin.”
“And this sketching you do. You do it all over?”
“Yes. I was in Poland last year. Then Russia the year before. After Lithuania, I’d like to visit the Jews in North Africa.”
They slowed their conversation to eat chicken soup spiced with carrots, parsnip, and a dash of salt. Again Hershel complimented Motlie, and all at the table could see he was sincere.
“They say Jews can own land in Germany, like in America,” said Israel.
“Yes. Jews have been enfranchised for over a hundred years.”
“What does this enfranchised mean?” asked Hanna.
“It means to free. Either from slavery or legal bondage. Also to become a citizen and to vote.”
Israel had been pulling at his beard and reflecting hard. “How is it,” he asked, taking a spoonful of soup to rethink his question one more time, “that you have permission to travel around Russia?”
“I’m an artist. Artists are free from politics, rulers, regulations.” He chuckled. “Especially after bribing half a dozen officials for the pass.”
Israel shook his finger knowingly and nodded his head, a gleam of understanding in his eyes. “That’s what talks in every country.” He approved of this German. He was not like most of the German Jews he had met who informed you at once that God had endowed them with a special superiority, as if they were the elite and the Poles and Russians were the crude types. That is what comes of being free.
He mulled over what Hanna had told him this morning–that the German seemed secretive. Israel trusted Hanna’s judgment. He thought of how she had taken over the direction of the family from him. Not obtrusively, nor deliberately, but from backstage. She did not pretend that he was the boss, she actually regarded him as such. The decisions she made came naturally, knowing intuitively that they were ones Israel would have made. There were times when Israel was ready to say, Whoa! I’ll say when we should do this, or how we will do that. Then he would realize that he was about to exert a display of leadership that was not really being questioned. Most important, Hanna had not asked to be placed in the decision-making role. She had accepted it because it had been suddenly dropped in her lap.
He looked across to her hanging onto every word Hershel was saying. My God, he thought, what a jewel some man will have one day. Like her mother. But he had to admit that Hanna was stronger and smarter than Motlie. We did well there, Motlie and I, he said to himself, a warm, proud smile on his lips.
He brought himself back to the present. He had let the remark from Hershel go by, that he had bribed his pass from some official. Israel had bribed far too many people to accept that story. One could water down the inspection of a boat, or speed up a permit, but a carte blanche of moving around a country like Russia, well, that took big money, or knowing a very important official, or having a very false pass. For a moment he felt fear. He had known fear intimately since his disability. Not a fear of death, for that is something that happens to neighbors or to people in Timbuktu. But one that reeked of poverty, like a lance thrust into his heart. Such as, what is going to happen to the family after Motlie goes? She was laughing again at something Hershel had said. Color was back in her cheeks. Thank the German for that. But what could happen to them all if the pass is not legal, he thought, focusing again on the subject, a chill lying heavily on his chest. The police might throw me into jail just for harboring the man, and neither my crippled leg nor my innocence in this matter would make a bit of difference to them.
Hanna brought to the table the two chickens, with peeled potatoes baked in their juice until they were brown and crisp, and a large platter of carrots. To one side were slices of golden challah, and next to Israel were slabs of pumpernickel, dark from unsifted rye.
For the children, all that chicken was a feast, one that was placed upon the table only on festive occasions. Hanna served Israel the chicken feet, which he loved to gnaw on, chewing away at the rough skin with the slender slivers of flesh inside. The girls clamored for the white breasts, while Hershel and Zelek preferred the thighs. Motlie liked the necks best of all, and would work on them for most of the meal.
There was only a sip of wine for each, for their budget could not stand more, even though the Sabbath was the most holy day. During the Sabbath, no man, servant, or beast was to work, all must bathe thoroughly, dress in their best clothes, use their finest linens, dishes.
Stephen came by while the family was having tea and cookies. Hanna went to the door. “Your shirt is ready. But come in and have a cup of tea with us.”
Stephen looked past her at the family seated round the table, and the stranger among them. He was slightly embarrassed. “Not now. I don’t want to interrupt you. I will come back tomorrow.”
“Who is there?” asked Israel in Yiddish.
“It is Stephen, Larisa’s brother.”
Israel was inclined to turn his attention back to those at the table. The young man was a gentile, and a Russian to boot, so there was no room at the Sabbath gathering. But Israel had met Larisa and liked her. He had also heard from Motlie that Stephen had given Hanna the fish. One look, though, at Motlie and Hanna’s faces was enough to change his mind.
“Ask him in for tea,” he told Hanna in Russian.
Hanna grinned at Stephen. ‘You must come now. Papa will not take no for an answer.”
Stephen nodded, stepped into the kitchen, and gave a short bow. “Good evening.”
Israel stood up and gave a short, stiff bow. “This is a friend of ours, Hershel Bloch, from Germany.” Then he stopped short. “By the way, what do you speak?” he asked Hershel in Yiddish.
Hershel got to his feet and also nodded his head in greeting. “I speak Russian and Polish,” he replied fluently in Russian, “and I can manage some Lithuanian.”
After some debate and much laughter, it was decided that the language of the evening would be Lithuanian, since it was the only language besides Yiddish that Motlie and the younger children remotely understood.
In seconds, a place across from Hershel was made at the table for Stephen, and a cup of tea and plate of cookies were set in front of him. And in minutes, the joking and the warmth of the family, undimmed even by a stranger, had Stephen fully at ease. As he munched on a cookie, only slightly sweetened due to the high cost of sugar, he could not believe that he had found the courage to come to the house tonight. He had eaten his hearty family supper quietly, his thoughts lost in the face and swinging walk of Hanna, the direct way her hazel eyes looked into his own, the vibrant flow that passed between them as he had handed over his shirt for mending. It was electric, that was the best way to describe it. Only the year before, electricity had been installed in Kaunas, and he had the occasion, as did most of the more adventurous young men, of touching his finger to a socket and getting a shock that tingled down to his boots. It was the same feeling with Hanna, with pleasure
