After the meal I thought that we'd return to the railway station and travel to Mother in Storozynetz, but we didn't. Father met old friends and was glad to see them, and they convinced him to enter the tavern for a toast. Father yielded to temptation and went in.
At the tavern Father spoke at length about art and art critics, about the dealers' and gallery owners' monopoly, and about the dreadful taste of petite bourgeois Jews, who decorate their homes with sentimental works of art. He went on and on, and you could see that this was a place where he found a ready ear and where everyone respected him. Toward evening he got to his feet and said, “My dear friends, I must set out for Storozynetz.”
“There's time; there's a night train.” They sought to keep him there.
I was tired and fell asleep on the bench. When I awoke it was already night. Everyone was talking animatedly. Father stared at me suddenly and said, “My poor boy! Dragged around from pillar to post with his strange father and no corner to call his own. Let's take him straight to a hotel.” He rose from his seat, pulled himself away from the gathering, and immediately set out with me for the hotel.
The owner of the hotel entered us in his registration book and told the bellhop to take our bags up to our room. It was a nice room, but it wasn't luxurious like our palace in Bucharest.
Father, it seemed, had drunk one glass too many. He spoke of things I didn't understand, and in the throes of his drunkenness, he swore that if an anti-Semite crossed his path, he would beat him without mercy. He also tossed out the name of some art critic whom he had mentioned before, but this time in a very direct and threatening way. Once I was afraid of Father's drunkenness, but now I wasn't. I knew that he'd eventually fall onto the bed, fold up his legs, and fall asleep.
Sometimes Father would wake up and call to me or one of his friends. I would hear but not answer — that's what he did at night and I wasn't frightened. Since we'd been together I'd come to know him well, from up close. Father was tall and strong, and sometimes I saw him in a dream, standing in a ring and boxing.
50
The following day we again did not rush to set out. Father was late getting up, and at noon we ate at the church refectory. After the meal we walked along the Prut. It was clear that Father loved the river and was happy to be near it. The entire way he hummed and spoke and argued, and eventually he turned to me and said, “Isn't it beautiful here?”
On our way back from the Prut, he met a friend from the orphanage. Father was glad to see him and immediately invited him to a café. A short, thin man, he was named Eddy. For years, since his youth, Eddy had worked at Frost's — a general store notorious for the ill treatment of its employees. He had tried other shops, but it hadn't worked out, and now he was thinking of emigrating to America.
“You're doing the right thing.” Father spoke in a loud voice.
“For the time being, I'm saving for a ticket.”
Father told him about Bucharest, about the exhibition, and about the anti-Semites swarming around everywhere.
“I can't imagine a world without anti-Semites.” Eddy spoke in a clear but weak voice.
“I must have deluded myself all these years,” said Father, imitating Eddy's voice.
“I don't even think about them.”
“Why?”
“They're part of nature; apparently there's nothing to be done.”
“And that's how it will always be?”
“That's how it seems to me,” said Eddy, and shrugged like a child.
Father was stirred by his words, embraced him, and repeated over and over: “It's good I met you. How many years has it been since I've seen you? You haven't changed at all, Eddy.”
“A pity that I can't change.”
“Why do you say that?”
“A man has to change.”
“You've already decided you're emigrating, and that's good.”
“It's too late, my friend.”
I noticed something: the skin on his fingers was transparent, and you could see his veins pulsing underneath. When he said, “It's too late, my friend,” a look of wonder filled his large right eye.
Then Father asked about the store and its owner, and about Eddy's friends at work. Eddy replied at length, and Father, who is usually impatient, did not interrupt him. He questioned him in great detail, and Eddy answered in the same detail.
“And you?” Eddy suddenly raised his head.
“I'm going to Storozynetz. Henia — we no longer live together — has come down with typhus and is in the hospital.”
Eddy lowered his head as if he was embarrassed that he had asked. Father added, “Henia worked at the primary school in Storozynetz. She's a dedicated teacher and was very highly thought of.”
“May God make her well again,” Eddy said in a voice that surprised Father.
“I see you're religious.”
“Insofar as I can be.”
“Strange,” said Father, a smile cracking the corners of his mouth.
“Why strange?”
“We didn't have fathers to teach us.”
“We did, only we didn't have the privilege of seeing them.”
“I didn't know that you're religious,” Father said again in a tone of wonder.
“I keep as much as I can,” said Eddy without looking at us.
“As for me,” Father confided to him, “I feel much closer to Christian rituals than to Jewish ones. Surely you remember how, at the orphanage, they would force us to pray. I couldn't stand the way we were forced.”
“I also couldn't stand it,” said Eddy in a quiet voice.
“And on Shabbos they didn't let us leave the yard.”
“You remember, I see.” Eddy laughed, and his large right eye filled his entire face.
Darkness began to fall. Father got to his feet and said, “We have to hurry to the train. It leaves at eight o'clock.” Eddy, who had sat there hunched over the entire time, also got up. Now I saw clearly how thin and short he was, as if his orphanhood had not left him. Father took some banknotes from his wallet, held them out to Eddy, and said, “That's from me toward your ticket to America.”
“What's with you?” said Eddy, stepping back.
“It's nothing.”
“I won't take it.”
“I beg you to.”
“I can't.”
“You must take it,” said Father in a tone that shocked me.
“And if I don't travel to America?” said Eddy in a different tone of voice.
“Then you'll give it back to me.”
Father had apparently put him on the spot, and Eddy seemed frozen in place. He stood there in silence, his head bent, and then he began to cry. At first it looked like he was shedding only a few tears, but the longer he stood there, the more the weeping spread throughout his body, making his shoulders shake.
“Forgive me,” said Father, and slipped the banknotes back into his coat pocket.
“You have to forgive me; I've refused your generosity.”
And so they parted. Father and I headed down to the station, and Eddy turned and went on his way. Father tried to explain it all to me, but I didn't understand anything he said. I felt that Eddy's refusal to accept his money had hurt him. As always after a hurt, Father raised his collar and buried his head inside it.
51
We missed the eight o'clock train and waited at the snack counter for the one departing at midnight. Father read a newspaper, lighting one cigarette from another. A cold night already crouched over the empty platforms. Here and there a porter could be seen dragging a bag or a suitcase. The warehouses alongside the platforms were locked with wide iron bars, and dim light rested on the protruding windowsills. I suddenly felt so sorry for Father that I touched his hand.