Comrades
a novel by Earl Coleman

Chapter 4

Even though she had prepared herself for many days, now with Joel just home from school and having his milk and crackers she had to force herself to speak to him. She turned the range burner down to a simmer, covered the pot and went into the dining room to sit beside Joel. He was reading Huckleberry Finn (He read so much! All his father's books and so much more!) but closed the book when she sat beside him. How he was growing. He was almost as tall as she. Skinny like his father. He was so handsome with Sam's face, but he had her mouth which pouted a little, his nose not beaked but slim and straight like hers. His coloring -- he would look like his papa. His face was still forming, not yet defined. The chin was already hers, stubborn; his dark eyes, Sam's.

"So, Joel. How was school today?" She smoothed his hair and caressed his cheek.

"Mama. You already asked me."

"Yes, yes, I did. I remember now. Hah." She could feel herself blushing like a girl.

"Do you have to make calls this afternoon, mama?"

"No. Not this afternoon. This afternoon I make only the most delicious supper -- your favorites, stuffed cabbage and potato latkes."

"Oh, yummy." He smiled at her broadly.

His face suddenly looked older to her. How fast. "Also, for supper we're having a guest."

"Oh -- is Mottel coming for supper?"

"No. Not Mottel."

"It's Grandpa and Grandma Lieberman?" he asked less avidly.

"No." She felt awkward, silly. She was a grown woman -- it was ridiculous.

"Is it a secret?" His eyes sparkled.

"No Joel. It's Doctor Gitomer. You've never met him."

The smile was gone in an instant. "A doctor? Are you sick?"

"No, no, my darling. For supper. He's coming for supper."

"But . . . " now he was confused and did not know how to continue and instead finished his milk, thinking.

"You know, Joel, we see so few people. You have your friend Mikey and you see him every day, and Mottel takes you out. I don't see anyone."

"And Doctor . . . "

"Gitomer."

"Doctor Gitomer is your friend?" He looked puzzled.

"I think he may become my friend."

He bit a fresh cracker in two. "Are you going to marry him?"

"Joel! We met once! Once! In his office. We're having a meal together, not a wedding supper."

Joel looked at his mother to try to see her anew but he couldn't. She was his mother. She was married to his father. This was a mystery. "I don't like stuffed cabbage that much," he said.

"Oh, Joel. I thought it was your favorite." She pulled him from his seat so that he stood beside her and she pressed him to her with her arms around his slender waist, her face up against his skinny ribs. "Do your homework and you can stay up with us a little late. OK?"

"OK, mama," he kissed her cheek, wanting briefly to hug her but didn't. He went to his room and took his bow and arrows from under the bed as well as the cheesebox with his doughboys who now protected six quarters, four dimes, some nickels and several pennies. He studied his treasures and then replaced them. He opened his exercise book and began with arithmetic, but he couldn't concentrate.

*

Rachel got up to clear the table. "May I help?" Leonard asked. "No, no. Joel usually helps but I'd like for just the two of you to talk together for a while. It's no trouble for me to clean." She removed the tureen first, with the ladle still in it, not hurrying, slowing in fact, so they could get to speak, and yet every minute flying. She had felt this way with Sam, especially during those first years, but then she was a kid! Leonard was the way she had remembered him, gentle, warm. She knew from his letter that he had a command of words but she had not expected him to be so learned. She was sure Sam would have liked him -- or would he? No, she was not sure.

"What grade are you in, Joel?" They sat opposite each other.

"The fifth." Joel had not really participated in the conversation all evening, even though some of the discussion was about him. Ever since he had met this mild, handsome man, who reminded him somehow of his father, he had felt like an object they were pointing to, a book.

"Do you take history yet?"

"Just beginning."

"Do they start with Biblical times? Do they teach about the diaspora?"

"Not the -- what's the word you used -- diaspora?"

"Ah. That is history you have to learn for yourself," he said, between puffs on his pipe.

"Do they teach Indian history?" Joel asked.

"You mean about the Pilgrims? Oh yes. I was talking about Jewish history. Do you know any?"

"No, sir."

"You don't know any?"

"No, sir."

Leonard nodded and pulled on his pipe. "Don't you learn Jewish history at cheder?"

"I don't go to cheder."

Leonard stopped puffing for a moment, his pipe held in mid-air. "How will you be bar-mitzvahed?"

"I don't know. I didn't like cheder." Then he said something quite daring. "Anyway, I'm only Jewish because my father was."

Leonard looked at him, puzzled. "Your mother's not?"

"No. I mean my father was really a Mohawk." Now he had said it, but suddenly he wasn't certain of it.

"An Indian?" Leonard paused again. "Is that why you wanted to know if they taught Indian history in school?"

"Yes. sir."

Leonard nodded and thought for a while, as Rachel collected the silverware (from the good set). "No, Joel," he said "they don't teach Indian history, not in the sense you mean it." He paused and regarded Joel over his pipe which he puffed at quietly. "Then your father wasn't really Jewish?"

"No, sir. He was adopted." Joel watched carefully, waiting to see how his mother's guest would react. He had never told this to anyone but Mikey and Mottel before, but now it was said and in the open.

"You believe you're a Mohawk then, at least on your father's side, and only half Jewish."

Joel nodded his head, meeting Leonard's eyes defiantly, waiting for some way to measure things, he did not know what.

"Well, Indians and Jews have a great deal in common, of course," he said. Rachel took the tablecloth off, the oak shining from the polishing of the afternoon. She brought the tablecloth into the kitchen. She listened, her heart pounding.

"They . . . do?"

"Indeed. They have both been persecuted, driven from their land by stronger, more heavily armed invaders. Do you know about the Aztecs and the Incas who once ruled large, rich kingdoms in Mexico and Peru until the Spanish came and enslaved them? They were Indians too. Because your father was a Mohawk you may think that all Indians are Mohawks, but there are Indian tribes all over the hemisphere." He could see that he had captured Joel's attention.

"Invaders who have new weapons, new ways of fighting, can defeat whole countries. Perhaps some day you'll learn about the brave Jews at Masada, outnumbered and out-armed by the specially trained Roman legions. Because I am a Jew I am more familiar with the history of Jews than Indians."

"My father agreed to be Jewish even though it's hard to be Jewish and he was only adopted," Joel said, determined to see it through.

"Yes. It is hard to be Jewish. When I was growing up I had to fight kids almost every day who wanted to beat me up because I was Jewish." Rachel had now joined them at the table, her apron off, color in her cheeks. "Do you have to fight too?"
"Yes. A lot. Mikey and me. Sometimes by myself."

"Is Mikey an Indian too?"

"No. He's Jewish."

Leonard nodded and refilled his pipe. "And what if you explained to them that you're really a Mohawk? At least on your father's side?"

"I wouldn't do that. My father agreed to be Jewish. So I do too."

"I have no choice," Leonard said. "I am one."

Rachel looked from one to the other. "So serious. The two of you sitting like Yeshivabochers in a shul."

"The two of us are serious people," Leonard said, "and these are serious times. Henry Ford is financing the Protocols of Zion, an anti-Semitic nonsense; the Dreyfus case was twenty years ago and the French just yesterday had anti-Semitic riots. Here in the United States Jews are hated -- many businesses won't hire Jews, hate Jews . . . "

"The A&P," said Joel.

"Yes," Leonard nodded, "and many others. In serious times, Rachel, serious people must discuss these matters." He took a moment to ream out his pipe, noticing that Joel tensed when he had used his mother's name.

"Are you an American?" Joel asked.

"Joel!" Rachel said.

"I'm second generation. I was a medical Lieutenant in the AEF."

"You were!? Did you see action?"

"I hope I don't disappoint you, Joel, but all I saw was Paris. I don't believe medical officers do see action but I'm glad I didn't. I don't know how heroic I would have been and I'm not sorry that I never had to find out. They took me in 1918 just as I was graduating from med school, put some bars on my collar and sent me off to France. When they demobbed me almost a year later I opened my practice. No battles to tell about. Just the battle to survive as a Jew in these serious times, even in the Army."

Rachel flushed. "Was it hard starting a practice?" she asked. He was an older man. Probably forty.

"I had to make up for the year I wasted, and I had family debts to pay. And yet -- it's my country, with a thousand opportunities. I didn't object to being called up for service and don't now, with all the anti-Semitism I experienced, even as an officer."

"I've got a collection of AEF tin soldiers," Joel said, "No officers, but a lot of non-coms and doughboys."

"Did you know, Joel, that one of the great heroes of the war was an Indian non-com? A sergeant whose name was York. There has been much written about him. I'll bring a book for you the next time I see you."

Joel stiffened. Then Doctor Gitomer and his mother were going to be friends. If they got married would Doctor Gitomer be his father? But his father was dead! There was nobody who could be his father except his father. Joel remembered Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel. Doctor Gitomer would be his stepfather. He looked at his mother incredulously. How could she let anything like that happen to him!?

"I've got to finish my homework," he said, and rose hurriedly from the table.

Leonard rose too. "It's been a pleasure talking with you, Joel. I hope I see you again. Soon."

"Goodnight, my darling Joel." Rachel kissed and embraced him, feeling him tense.

He didn't study in his room. He stared at the cracks in the window shade.

*

As she was stuffing the cabbage that afternoon, she had decided that when Joel went to his room after supper she and Leonard would sit in the living room on the couch and listen to the Victrola. She didn't know how else to entertain him! Now she played "Deep in the Heart of a Rose," a long-time favorite. (Joel, who had been on the verge of falling asleep, felt an immediate pang. How could she share this family memory of theirs with a stranger? Was Dr. Gitomer really going to be his stepfather? The pain remained as his eyes closed.)

They sat at opposite ends of the couch. She felt flushed, almost faint. "So," she said, "I promised we'd talk about you and all night we've talked about us, Joel and me. I'm ashamed."

"Rachel. It's OK. There's time." McCormack's tenor rose. "We're sitting. Talking to each other. There's time."

She felt the sureness he carried. It buoyed her, gladdened her spirit, made her feel a smile. "I liked it that you talked to Joel seriously. He's such a serious boy. The way he talks -- like a grown-up. A student. An A student -- more than that -- a walking library.

"His father always talked to him the same way -- seriously. With Sam everything was serious. He even took seriously his Mohawk mishugas and gave it to Joel -- wait, I'm doing it again! Leonard, what will you think of me?" She blushed and shook her head from side to side, half-smiling. The McCormack ended and Rachel changed to the "Humoresque" with Elman playing, Rachel flustered and pleased to have something to do.

"Joel remains much attached to his father, I can see," he said. "I think he still believes a little that his father was a Mohawk, and he too. It has its own truth, very touching. I understand it. I'm just as serious about being Jewish -- not that I'm orthodox or even very religious. No. But I am Jewish. I feel it the way Joel feels he's a Mohawk. A handsome boy."

"Thank you." She flushed. "I was going to say 'Yes, like Sam,' but I promise, no more. Would you like some tea? I made a small chocolate cake. If Joel had stayed up he could have shared it with us, but he left so suddenly."

Leonard nodded and took the pipe from his mouth. "He remembers his father and you together, Rachel. He thinks of me as an intruder in his life. Not in yours, I hope." He reached his hand out and she held hers out too so that their hands clasped in the center of the couch. "No, Leonard. Not an intruder. You will be my friend?"

"Yes. I will be your friend." He released her hand.

"I'll make us some tea." She went to the kitchen, her face flaming, the record having come to its end and repeating its revolving noise. While she put the water on to boil Leonard changed to "Dardanella." When she returned he was sitting in the center of the couch. She hesitated for the briefest of moments and sat beside him. He took her face in his hands, turned her head toward his and kissed her passionately, his hands holding her face, the two of them motionless, the moment plucked from time. She broke away and found herself sobbing.

"Rachel . . . did I . . . "

"No, no, Leonard," she gasped. "It's only . . . am I going to cry whenever I see you? . . . no, it's too . . . "

"Too soon? Too quickly?"

"No, Leonard, not that. No." She had stopped crying. "I had forgotten. It's so good to feel. I'm embarrassed. You'll think I'm fast."

He took her hand again. "No, Rachel, I'm still afraid you'll think I'm slow. I wanted to kiss you that day in my office months ago and it took until now."

She pressed his hand. "I was too busy crying that day." She smiled shyly, her face still wet, as the teapot whistle blew. He turned off the Victrola and when she came back with the tea she found him standing as Sam used to, at the window, staring out. It startled her.

They had their tea and cake at the dining table sitting beside each other, Rachel quite melted. "Chocolate is my favorite," he said.
"Joel's too." She hesitated. "If . . . when . . . you know what I mean -- if we're friends -- I was reading Doctor Holt -- it could affect Joel. It seemed to tonight. Do you know what I'm saying?"

Leonard kissed her cheek and pressed her head against his shoulder. "You are a person, Rachel, who is also a parent. Does Doctor Holt tell you that? Not only a parent, even though I respect that -- I did want to be one so badly."

"Oh, Leonard . . . I'm so sorry . . . ." she took his hand.

"No, no. I've done my crying."

"What was her name, Leonard, your wife?"

"Her name," and he paused for a second, "my wife was called Naomi."

They sat quietly, their hands still clasped, both caught up now in their own thoughts. "I should be going, Rachel. We both have work tomorrow. I have to be at the hospital at 7:30." She thought briefly to protest but didn't.

At the door he took her into his arms and they held each other fast. He whispered into her ear. "L'chaim, Rachel," he said. "Welcome to my life."

She kissed him, standing on tip-toe to do so. "Welcome to mine."

*

When Mottel wasn't chewing his toothpick he was smoking, with a fierce intensity that even so never burned fully, a thin, short man, of enormous emotional energy seen by the world only as dour, angry, impatiently waiting. Except with Joel. Joel and Mottel were together a great deal, for Mottel was often in the middle of slack time and enjoyed late afternoons with his young friend. Joel was growing to look so like Sam. Sometimes they played checkers; frequently they walked, talking politics, Socialist politics. Joel knew almost as much by now about the ins and outs of Socialist politics as men able to vote, and argued doctrine and position with a certain skill.

Mottel didn't laugh often, not because he was humorless but because everything was serious! The passion he felt was masked by his sullen face. He read voraciously, like Sam, but concentrated on tracts, leaflets, pamphlets, tiny Socialist or radical tabloids that burst into print with their pent-up flame and died after two issues. He could quote Debs, Norman Thomas, Jay Lovestone. Sometimes he took Joel to hear their speeches at Cooper Union on weekends, and then they would walk the streets of Manhattan analyzing what they had heard until they took the train to bring Joel back to the Bronx in time for supper. Joel could quote from the speeches themselves, travelling through the Manhattan tunnels.

They talked of Joel's father often. "Your father," Mottel might say, "your father, Joel, did everything with joy. He had a gift for that. For him a serious thing could also be a joy. Even struggle, the struggle of the working class, was to him of course serious but a joy. To me," he would say, coughing violently, "not a joy. A deadly serious business."

Sometimes he would talk to Joel about his memories of the Russia of his youth, the shtetl, a pogrom that had almost cost him his life except that he had hidden in the shit of the outhouse during the noise and the burning and the killing that went on half the night. He had only been six but the memory lived with him fresh. The Tsar of course was now dead, but Lenin too was dead. And yet there was a nation, imagine, a whole nation where they had Socialism. Even in America they had a Socialist Party which he had finally joined, even though he was still apprehensive about the Palmer raids, the hostility against unions of any kind, the spies he fancied were everywhere, the thought of Sacco and Vanzetti recently railroaded to the electric chair. "Your father was brave, Joel -- if I could have half his bravery. I'm always thinking. Thinking, you understand. Fearful! Your father did. A risk, sometimes -- but it counted. I miss him. You of course miss him. The world, believe me, misses him. Your father."

It was rare that Joel contributed to stories about his father. He listened and absorbed. The listening helped him remember. . . . They were at Sunday breakfast. A matjes herring, some sliced carp, pot cheese, poppyseed rolls. They were reading the funny papers together. His mother, laughing over her tea, suddenly went to his father, sat in his lap and kissed him, blushed red as a beet and went back to her chair and burst out crying and then hugged him, Joel, so tight that he thought he'd break.

This Saturday afternoon they were dressed for the winter, Joel in long underwear and a sweater and a coat on top of that, plus a plaid scarf around his throat and a hat with ear muffs which he hated and always wore turned up. Mottel wore an extra sweater under his jacket and a cloth cap, his only concessions to harsh weather. They walked uptown from Cooper Union.

"That last one, Joel -- that Hillquit, I don't trust. Something -- I don't know. He looks like a boss. Like he eats too regular." They crossed Fourteenth Street and passed Klein's, busy with streams of shoppers. "I gave you a pamphlet last week, Joel. Lovestone. Did you read it -- about the part young people can play -- you had a chance?"

Joel nodded his head yes and watched his breath become visible as he blew air through his lips.

"Very quiet today, Joel. Something bothering you? School?" Mottel stopped and faced Joel, who was almost as tall as he was.

"My mother."

"Your mother? Something wrong?"

"She's got . . . a boy friend."

"She does? So?" Mottel put his hand under Joel's chin in the cold air and looked at him intently. "She's not entitled?" They resumed walking.

Joel didn't answer because Mottel's question made the matter clear. His father had told him to be strong. Kids his age were out selling newspapers and he was able to go to school. The world was cold and he was warm. His father had said to take care of his mother.

"Her boy friend is Jewish," he said.

"So what should he be? Irish?"

"My papa accepted to be Jewish, but he wasn't Jewish. Do you know what I mean Mottel? I told you his stories about being a Mohawk but that's not it either. He worried about the world, the way it was, even about birds and animals. Not only about being Indian, being Jewish. You know?"

Mottel nodded in agreement. "Know? Of course I know. This is why he was so rare. He was a mensch, Joel. You know how one in a million that is? Come, we'll go in the Automat here and have some baked beans, good in this weather."

They stood in line at the change counter, which always fascinated Joel. You would give the lady any large coin. She would flick her wrist and out would fly exactly the right change in nickels, like magic. Even three quarters -- three flicks. Mottel gave her one quarter and simultaneously five nickels hit the marble indentation. The restaurant was a forest of tiny windows, where you went to the window you chose, dropped in one or two nickels and you opened the window and took out your food. You got napkins and silverware from huge dispensers. The baked beans had a sort of skin on it and came in a brown cup and a small strip of bacon lay on the very top. It was so good.

When they were seated Mottel said, "You'd have to be crazy, Joel, not to be worried being Jewish. We've been shlanged for thousands of years. Indians -- of course. But how about black people, not only Zulus in Africa but right here, not only in the South but in the North? Your father, who was a very wise man, would say that we all have something in common, you know what I mean, Joel? -- something that we share! Something we have to respect!" His eyes glowed, incandescent, and suddenly his glum face was lit with energy. "What he meant was that when we worry only that we're Indian, that we're Chinese, we are so concentrated on that, we miss joining together to force the world to give us what we deserve as human beings. The Bible, which I don't often quote, tells us 'You are your brother's keeper.' Your father knew that Joel. A good man. A person. A mensch."

Joel's eyes stung with tears, but he fought them back. He stirred his beans, which were so tart and delicious. "Mottel. My Grandma Deborah said that he killed himself. How could he do that? Can you kill yourself?" As he looked at Mottel he could not stop the wetness at his eyes.

"You are old enough to read and understand Jay Lovestone, you are old enough to know this. Your father was willing to be a leader, Joel. Look what has happened to us, trying to make a union after he died. No one, there's no one who could bring us together as he could. He was patient. He knew things. He gave us love that he had for us. At the end he could not blame himself enough -- even for my being hurt. So for everything he, and he alone, was responsible. He gave us himself, and still he believed he failed us in the end. He was sure he failed you and your mother. So for him -- he failed everybody and the last straw was the police raiding our meeting. He was afraid that if he stayed, lived, he would fail us again. So he killed himself to make sure he wouldn't." He thrust his face intently across the table, his dark eyes locked to Joel's. "You understand?"

Joel shook his head, his mouth working. "But leaving us, Mottel. How could this not hurt us?"

"Yes, Joel. But staying -- he thought he might hurt us more."

"So he did suicide."

"He drank -- Joel, it should never happen to anyone, not even my worst enemies -- lye. It burned up his insides." Joel looked at him in horror and pain. "You know how brave you have to be for this? To put an end to living by burning yourself up because you don't want to hurt the people you love?" And Mottel found himself joining Joel in his tears, their hands clasped across the table in the middle of the Automat, the clash of nickels cascading on the marble.

In the train going to the Bronx they sat in the rear car, watching the black tunnel race backward to disappear. "Mottel," Joel said, turning his head, "what can I do? How can I bring to the world, like my father?" Mottel turned to Joel and took his face in his two bony hands and kissed his forehead. "Joel, it's time to introduce you to the world and the world to you. It's time."

Joel looked at him, his eyes eager, open, ready.

"I'm going to talk to your mother first, of course. I'd like you should join the Young Peoples Socialist League. They will be good for you. And you, like your father, will be good for them."

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