We liked to listen to them, although in our presence (by Grandpa Yosef’s orders) they did not delve too deeply into the Shoah itself. We sat at their feet, an inner ring inside the circle of tea-drinkers, enjoying a wonderful childhood in the shadow of their terrors. When Grandpa Lolek was not around they could compare stories, rate their suffering, measure their sorrow. And they could quarrel, declaring things like, “Nu, you, let’s see you in Stutthof! Let’s see you survive just two days there…” As if the possibility existed — a simple matter of addressing the package correctly, and the man would be sent off to Stutthof for two days.
Behind them, on invisible benches, sat their actions. Thanks to those actions they were here. They had survived.
Sometimes Dad would come to the neighborhood after work, at Grandpa Yosef’s behest, to fix a closet for one poor man, do some electrical work for another. Dad’s magic hands enabled Grandpa Yosef to implement righteous intentions, since he himself did not get along with things like soldering irons and screws. He paid Dad with his own pickled herring, a good cup of tea and a vague assurance of a place in heaven, to which he sometimes alluded as if he himself went up there once in a while to oversee construction.
There were a few rays of light in the neighborhood too. For example, Yehoshua’s barbershop, where Dad stopped in when he visited the neighborhood to get haircuts for himself and for me. The barbershop was not exactly in the neighborhood, but across the way. Still, the whole neighborhood went to cut their hair at Yehoshua’s. His name was known far and wide because he had once cut the hair of the Queen of Belgium (so they said), and also because he gave haircuts to the elderly in their homes. That was the greatness of Yehoshua: anyone who could no longer leave their home and was lying ill in bed, earned a visit from him. He gave haircuts to the needy for free until their final days, never shirking, working diligently to fulfill his clients’ requests. The caveat in this act of righteousness was his rule that the elderly person had to be a loyal client, to keep getting his hair cut at Yehoshua’s as long as he could make it there. Under no circumstances could he get his hair cut at any other barber. And the temptation was there. On trips to Haifa, after errands and the market, after the plumber and the bank. On Herzl Street, for example, there were little shop windows that revealed barbers with white cloaks chatting inside. Behind them, on chairs, rows of people waited. You could go in and have a chat while you waited. And where are you from? Ohanov? Nu, myself too, not far. Rawa-Ruska. Kapler was our name. And the talk would go on.
But all that was forbidden. With Yehoshua the barber there were no compromises. Having no choice, in return for service during their old age, they enslaved themselves to him and took pains not to be absent, not to wait too long between cuts, certainly never to try a competitor. The touch of a foreign hand, even covered by months of growth, was immediately exposed, including the barber’s name.
“So, you went to Pollack in town, eh?”
And the traitor was out of the charity program.
“Just thought we’d give Antek a try, eh? On HaNevi’im Street, yes? Thought Yehoshua wouldn’t notice his livelihood was being robbed?”
And gone was the chance for free haircuts by Yehoshua during old age.
There was no forgiveness from Yehoshua-who-cut-the-queen-of-Belgium’s-hair. Except for Gershon Klima, who did as he wished and Yehoshua did not protest. No one messed with Gershon Klima.
The main feature in Yehoshua’s barbershop was a wall of mirrors across from the barber chairs. The entire barbershop was reflected in these mirrors, all the way to the opposite wall, where people sat waiting. You could see their closed eyes, their tired thoughts, and the magazines they glanced at once in a while, just scanning the letters. Nothing could be hidden from the mirrors, but even so, I sometimes found magazines with pages secretly cut out, only a woman’s foot remaining on the page, or a crown of hair and the edge of an opulent bed. The mirrors were large; from my height they reflected the white ventilator, spider webs, the lamp. Old photographs were taped on the corners: two soccer players in black and white, shaking hands and exchanging little flags, and a scene in front of a goal with a soccer player jumping up for a never-to-be-materialized head-butt. I never asked who the player was. It seemed wrong.
Beneath the pictures on the counter were dozens of knives and other weapons of destruction, little bottles and containers with tubes protruding at odd angles. Yehoshua cut my hair using only scissors and a little tap water. Before the cut he rubbed the water into my scalp mercilessly with his thick fingers. (The Queen of Belgium?) I was even dispossessed of the little mirror that displayed the backs of the customers’ heads for them afterwards. Deprived, I looked on as the adult customers were treated to shears and files, clippers and tweezers. At the end of his work, and sometimes during, he even squirted them with a toxic cloud of eau de cologne. Not sufficing with heads alone, the shrapnel of scent moved through the air like a little fish, floated across the mirror and made its way to the storefront window, where it sat down in little beads on top of the words, “Barber Yehoshua Elegant — Appointments Needed,” (you came in and sat down — that was how you made an appointment), its glistening turning Yehoshua’s barbershop into a feast of light. On the high wall above the lamps were pictures of all the Chiefs of Staff, apart from Moshe Dayan, who, in the Yom Kippur War, had killed Yehoshua’s son. I memorized their faces, their names, the years they served in office.
Once, after much whispering in Dad’s ear, on the special occasion of my birthday, Yehoshua consented to give me one squirt of eau de cologne. The burning sensation, the fire in my nostrils, the oddness of the occasion, all paled in comparison with the peaks on which my soul rested for a brief moment, a shepherd in the Garden of Eden. I felt as though I might burst. Through the tears, the excitement, and the mirrors, I could see the ancient picture of the soccer player rising up to butt the ball.
“Who is that?” I finally dared to ask, pointing. (After all, today I had entered the secret world of grownups.)
Dad and Yehoshua adopted solemn expressions and grew sad. Many years of stone bleachers and Totto betting forms, listening to little radios on Saturday nights, and memories of stadiums in Poland, all solidified in Dad’s response: “That’s Duncan Edwards from Manchester United.”
“May God avenge his blood,” Yehoshua added, but he looked at the row of Chiefs of Staff.
It turns out that Duncan Edwards had not been murdered at all, but had perished in February 1958, in a plane crash in which the entire Manchester United team was killed. And so I learned of new ways to love, to set one’s heart on a single thing, to defeat logic in the face of the soul’s devotion. Manchester United was engraved on my father’s heart and on Yehoshua’s heart, and on the hearts of those waiting their turn at Yehoshua’s. And now it was engraved on mine too. The Mancunian induction was a gateway into the world of true love.
Anat.
We married a year after we met. The first time I heard her speak, she was uttering a lament: “But sir, eighteen thousand cases just this year. Doesn’t that seem important to you?”
Desperately enveloped in the thread of an argument, trapped in Grandpa Lolek’s net, she was not able to concede. He faced her as she stood in his doorway, stubbornly refusing to donate money, but more than willing to donate an opinion or two.