Grandpa Yosef went into the kitchen again and reemerged with his pride and joy, a cake that looked like a hat with a battered rim. He declared, “Finally the lekach cake came out right! All those years my Feiga tried to teach me the recipe, and finally…” He placed the cake on the table to slice it. His pride was real, glowing. (Success, after years of failure, and there was no one to give him a prize.)
We both sat and ate. Grandpa Yosef wandered through his desert of life without Feiga, without Moshe. I pushed along a ball of hatred and they asked me to build bridges. To forget, to forgive. Hans Oderman was arriving soon, the orphan researcher.
“Nu, how’s the cake?”
“Delicious.”
“When my Feiga was still alive, she always knew how long to mix the batter, when to take it out of the oven. She would always remind me. Without her, sometimes strange things come out of the oven.”
“It’s still a little hard for you without Feiga, isn’t it?”
“Oh…nu. When my Feiga was still alive, there was always someone to talk with, someone I could discuss an interesting Gemara page I had read with, or things they were saying in the neighborhood. Now there’s no one to talk to, and my thoughts roll around inside and keep going. Nu, not to worry.”
“It will be all right. Time heals, they say.”
Grandpa Yosef looked up. “Time heals?” His face relaxed for a moment, gathering up a thought like a river collecting rivulets. Suddenly he shouted, “Time heals?! I still haven’t healed from the people I lost long ago, and time heals? A little hard without Feiga? How about it’s still a little hard without my brothers and my mother and father, who went in Belzec, and I still can’t accept that? Maybe that’s still a little hard?” He carved thick, moist slices of cake that fell on their sides, one on top of the other, on the dish.
I looked at him quietly. I had never heard Grandpa Yosef shout before.
He hummed and huffed as if to still himself. He moved his head from side to side, trying to understand. “Nu, I…. Well. You know….”
“It’s all right.”
“I’m actually a little…after I told you everything…things haven’t been sitting well inside. Nu, the memories….”
He went to the kitchen and dragged some pots around. Opened and closed the oven door. Did what he knew best, putting himself into order. He pulled something off a shelf. Opened the fridge. Closed it. Came back and apologized again. I did too.
“Anat said it wasn’t good of me to remind people of what happened.”
“Nu, well, Anat. She knows how to feel things. Is everything okay with you two? With the issue?”
A ball of hatred rolled along. The dung beetle lost its ball.
“Everything’s fine,” I said.
“Yes….”
“There’s nothing to be done.”
“Nu, everybody has problems.”
We spoke quietly, breaking down the previous exchange into small words, letters, tiny signs that meant nothing. Grandpa Yosef tried to find something to do with his hands. He started slicing the cake again. “You know, I still have trouble with Rothschild too. Since we spoke, it’s been harder. I can’t get rid of the thought that he somehow stayed there, for evermore in Buchenwald. That’s where my last memory of him is, and apart from what is in my memory, what other existence does Rothschild have? Sometimes I think, if only I could get him out of there and have one memory of life after Buchenwald. For example, Rothschild managing a store here on Herzl Street, doing business. But how? That’s where he stayed.” He paused for a thought. “And Mr. Hirsch walking around the neighborhood, that’s not easy for me, it reminds me of things. But you accept it. You live your life. With all sorts of things, you live.”
Grandpa Yosef, our sleigh-dog, still pulling the corpse wagons.
We ate the cake silently. Grandpa Yosef pulled the pie towards himself and cut a slice. He tasted it. “I might have put too much cardamom in this,” he mumbled. “Maybe it doesn’t need any cardamom at all.” He fell silent.
(He cannot be helped. Grandpa Yosef pulls the corpse wagons. Everyone here in the neighborhood, that’s what they do. Pull wagons. White figures looking for things at night, sitting like tubers in warm homes, saying, “How are things?” and answering, “Life goes on,” like a frightened lie, like something that redeems. Grandpa Yosef at least has the strength to live. Most of the people here have never lived after the camps. Even though they were liberated and sent to Israel on boats and given houses to live in, nothing truly alive came out from behind those fences. A massive fraud. Eating and drinking and sleeping for fifty years, with remarriages and new children — all a fraud. All that survived are shells with memories. Empty shells listening to the radio, walking to the grocery store, going to visit relatives. Fifty years, and in Germany the war is long over. The guard soldiers and the train conductors and the propaganda clerks have already forgotten. The foremen, the gas manufacturers, and the transport supervisors have already forgotten. The engine operators and the experimenters and the order-givers have already forgotten. Those who were not hanged have already forgotten. Those who were not shot by avengers — forgotten. Only here, in the neighborhood, shells with memories.)
I cut myself another slice of cake. To cheer him up. A cake he made from Feiga’s recipe. Where did Feiga have recipes from? From her home, most likely, there, in Bochnia. We eat cake made from a recipe from a world destroyed. Grandpa Yosef, lost in thought, digs his fork into the crumbs. We don’t know what to talk about. We try. There is always a way.
“Nu, what’s new in the neighborhood?”
Littman from the grocery store may be closing down. His son might take over, or he might sell it to someone else. Adella Greuner has started singing. She’s really disturbing the neighbors. They went to talk to her, and she promised, but nothing. (We both remember her brother who came from America in a taxi to slap her and go back home). Gershon Klima’s bombax has started creaking in the wind, the branches must be old. Someone said it should be chopped down, but they won’t let that happen.
“And Asher Schwimmer?”
“Asher Schwimmer. I really should go see him one of these days, poor man. I heard he’s still slapping people. They don’t know what to do with him.”
“And Gershon?”
“Klima is all right. He asks about you and Effi. He’s at home for now. Nu, things move slowly with him.”
Before we say goodbye, Grandpa Yosef presents me with a twin brother of the lekach cake and a pie wrapped in foil (“In this one, thank God, I forgot to put cardamom”). He offers some homemade jam (“a little sour, but it’s energizing”). He is back to his old self, our Grandpa Yosef. What happened to him before must have just been nerves. The preparations for Hans Oderman’s arrival are exhausting him, and we all have bad days. He sends regards to Anat. “You have a wonderful wife,” he says as he walks me down Katznelson. I mustn’t forget that I have a wonderful wife. He stops when a bark comes from the direction of his house. “Well, I have to go back to put out food. I’m sorry.”
Of everything that happened at Grandpa Yosef’s, his yelling, and our conversation, and the documentation that didn’t affect him, and the corpse wagons, I suddenly think of Asher Schwimmer. I have to go and see him. He is the final riddle, the place where the marvel might be hiding, a true splinter from the Big Bang. I must go to his new place near Nazareth and talk to him, no matter in which language, whatever enables us to talk, to find some gem of King Solomon’s wisdom that will bring us together. Why did he forget his Hebrew? Why did he start slapping people? Grandpa Yosef spoke of him with worry, but I know that the slaps are in fact a sign that something has awoken. A blossoming of sorts. For fifty years he was quiet, his Hebrew lost (The Carmel peaks shall I ascend / in His forest shall I prophesize. / The rivers of Levy shall be mine / a nest for the crow and a bed for the brambles), but now he is returning, his powers are being restored and he has the courage to accuse. Something inside him is sprouting those slaps like brave flowers in a desert. I must see Asher Schwimmer. Whatever he says, I will use — kindling for everything I need.