Grandpa Yosef taught us a chapter in remorse. He did not have to use many looks or words, he trusted that we would sense the nuanced emotions, the hidden meanings of his gestures of withdrawal. But with Grandpa Lolek it was simple and determined. As if to pay him back for many seconds, many hours, for the six million whom Grandpa Lolek had continuously humiliated without anyone doing anything about it. Instead of the whole six million, they usually focused their grief on one or two people, becoming their voice.
Grandpa Lolek’s response was surprising. It would seem that he could have avoided Grandpa Yosef’s presence — what was bringing them together? But instead he repeatedly asked for Grandpa Yosef’s forgiveness, insistently, innocently, without complaint. He admitted that he had behaved badly. And he was prepared to apologize, to atone. We could see that he cared. Delegations were sent. Grandpa Yosef welcomed the guests with his usual humbleness, taking his doughy cakes out of the oven, serving herring and home-made pickles. But despite the normal hospitality, in the matter of Grandpa Lolek he would not budge. His face hardening, his temples sprouted veins as he announced that he was unwilling to make up. “May he go to hell and go in peace,” he blessed the banished relative.
We kept trying. Our self-declared role as mediators allowed us to feel objective, outside the fan of Grandpa Yosef’s anger. We were merely the organizers of a transaction, not a party to the affair. A number of times the reconciliation was about to come to fruition. The two were already positioned on either side of the bridge, the exchange ceremony about to begin, when suddenly Grandpa Yosef would brush off the agreement — he would never forgive, never! We tried to persuade him. Tried to demand explanations. Grandpa Yosef extricated himself from us. Trembling. He wagged his finger, mumbled, grumbled, rubbed one fist against the other. His temples lit up in rage. Words tried to escape. Commotions. Little crackles in the pipe works. Sweat glistening on his forehead.
We were amazed. This was not the Grandpa Yosef we knew. This was not the Grandpa Yosef he himself knew from looking in the mirror. And so we summoned time to come and heal. We invited the months to pass by, to place cold compresses on his face. We sensed that Grandpa Yosef did not wish to alienate the Caribbeanism in which he was slowly coming to know himself, his condition, his widowerhood. He fumbled alongside a dark wall, finding only a grieving father and no one to make the effort for. No one at all. He was preparing for a great battle, a desert front: life ahead without Feiga, without Moshe. With a burning silence he shed colorful layers, rainbow-colored feathers, war paint. He shrunk down to the right size, a life of austerity around the darkness of routine and family events. Only towards Grandpa Lolek did his resentment maintain its tropical nature, devouring our attempts to alleviate, to lighten, to conciliate.
Grandpa Lolek stopped relying on us and tried a few of his own reconciliation methods. He failed. He tried again, and failed again. Then he made up his mind that he had no choice. As an emergency ploy, like a pilot abandoning his plane, he produced his final attempt: a cancerous tumor in his head. He may have six months left to live. In the meantime, tests were to be run.
After Grandpa Lolek lost consciousness on the steps outside his house and was rushed to the hospital, the harsh prognosis was pronounced: the growth was cancerous, his chances slim. Later, a more moderate possibility emerged. There might even be full recovery. We sat there, Grandpa Yosef and I, on a little bench in Rambam Hospital, waiting for a doctor, for solid information. Anxiety took hold of Grandpa Yosef’s face, somehow looking more natural than the Caribbean vigor.
Effi arrived, alarmed. “What happened? He lost consciousness? On the front steps?’
She pushed open closed doors and talked with doctors. Grandpa Lolek suddenly became the most urgent case there, although he himself was by then lying calmly on a clean bed, his blue eyes shut, tranquility in his bones. After an hour Effi calmed down too. She sat down tiredly on the bench with us and became a worried relative once again. No more being a doctor.
Grandpa Yosef was curious, still clinging to her in her role as a doctor. “What does it mean that he passed out like that?”
“Lots of things. It could be lots of things.”
“But to pass out? All of a sudden, in the middle of the day?”
“That was so he wouldn’t have to make the call to the hospital, so someone else would pay for the call, that’s why,” Effi said, completely restored.
“My Feiga never passed out. It was hard for her, but she always kept her eyes open.” Already making comparisons between the new patient and his patient. (Feiga won. Her refreshing morbidity was inimitable.)
We organized shifts when Grandpa Lolek woke up and wanted to know what the fuss was about, when he could leave, and whether the Sick Fund would cover his expenses. The doctors told him he had suffered “a kind of stroke.” There seemed to be something pressing on his brain, a tumor — no, not cancerous, it could be lots of things. They reassured him that the Sick Fund would likely cover all the treatments. For now they would leave him under observation. They needed to do some X-rays. And a CT. They left me with him while the family went to get some sleep and organize things.
We waited for the CT. Grandpa Lolek, from one moment to the next, grew stronger. He demanded food, cigarettes. He tried to get out of bed, embarrassed — how could a hero of Anders’ Army be lying on a stretcher bed in a hospital? By the time they were ready for the CT, he had worn me out with his plethora of demands, opinions, schemes (three escape attempts in four hours, one grab for a meal in the closed kitchen). Grandpa Lolek flew into a rage when they would not let me in the CT room. I whispered to the nurse, “I’ll just go in with him and come straight out.” We went in. Grandpa Lolek was very alert, waving a stick he had gotten hold of the devil knows where. He held it close to him, giving the impression that the stick was an old friend and no one could possibly take away this old man’s support. He also used the stick to rap on the side of the CT machine and wink at me inexplicably, a wink I suspected was related to the tumor in his brain. He rapped impatiently on the machine, again and again, as the nurses grew angry. Finally I saw it. A little label on the side of the machine read, “Donated by the Society for the War on Cancer.” Grandpa Lolek was clarifying that for this machine, he had not given a penny. I went out and sat on the bench while inside the CT machine scanned Grandpa Lolek for free.
After half an hour a commotion broke out in the room. The closed space into which Grandpa Lolek had been slid like a cake in an oven had a negative affect on the old warrior. He lost consciousness. The doctors, alarmed, rushed him to the treatment room. For long hours, it turned out, Grandpa Lolek fought for his life. A kind of sudden collapse. Not something the CT was supposed to cause, it was a completely routine test. But still, tubes were inserted into his nose and body while the doctors tried to save him. In the morning his condition was stable but he lay in bed unconscious. The family came. Even Atalia and Grandpa Hainek. They were amazed to hear about the overnight crisis. Why hadn’t I called anyone? How could there be such a sudden deterioration?
Everyone thought of Uncle Pessl. Uncle Pessl had been a robust man whose eighty-five years were apparent only in his Austro-Hungarian opinions. We had always admired him, despite his dimwittedness, because he was a partisan and had strangled five Nazis to death with his bare hands, and even when anti-Semitic peasants had turned him in he had gone on to survive the camps and even the death march from Gross-Rosen. Since then, he always walked upright, elegantly. Always with few words and a bow tie. Last Sukkot he was walking through the shopping center and fell down. People quickly helped him up; he only had a slight bruise on his knee. But since then, Uncle Pessl had not recovered. Now he was in a nursing home and wanted to die.