“It is not that,” said Esther. “I heard them say that you are learned in the religion.”
“You wish to speak to a rabbi,” said Zorah.
“No,” Esther said quickly. “I would not dare. Besides, there is the language … so please, miss …”
“Why do you address me formally?”
“What am I to call you?”
“No need to call me anything. Just tell me what you want,” Zorah said, exasperated but curious.
Esther smiled. “You see? You are kind. But I’m afraid that in order to ask you this question, I must impose a little on your patience so that you understand. You will permit me?”
Zorah shrugged.
Esther squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, as though she were about to recite a lesson.
“My real name is Kristina Piertowski, or it was until we got on the boat and I took the name of Jacob’s mother.
“God has blessed me with this little boy, but I did not give birth to him. His mother was the kindest, most cultured woman I ever met. She spoke Polish, German, and French, as well as the Yiddish. As a girl, she had dreamed of becoming a physician, but it was very difficult for women, and then, of course, she was a Jew. She married Mendel Zalinsky, a good man who adored her. A furrier. She was already thirty-five when they married. Jacob was born the next year.
“I was his baby nurse. I held him from his first day in the world and I loved him. The other nurses in the park used to say that you could lose your job if the children grew too attached to you, but Madame Zalinsky was not like that. She said, ‘The more he is loved, the better he will be able to love.’ You see what I mean? A generous woman. A wise woman.
“We were in Krakow and Mr. Zalinsky saw what was happening. He sent us to a cottage on the outskirts of a little town in the country, not too far that he couldn’t visit sometimes, but far enough that he thought we would be safer.” Esther stopped for a moment. “I heard that he was shot trying to bring food to an old woman who lived down the street from us. At least Madame never knew, God be praised.
“We were all right in that village for a little while, but there was a next door neighbor who wanted the house for himself. So that son of a bitch, pardon me, said something to the police, may he burn in hell.
“Madame told me that if anything were to happen, I was to take Jacob and go. She gave me a fur coat with golden coins sewn into the lining. She told me to use the money for us both, and not to neglect myself. Can you imagine? That she should think of me at such a time?
“The day it hap
pened, she kissed us both and sat down in a chair facing the door. I can see her still, sitting so straight, with a little valise on the floor beside her.
“I took Jacob to my grandparents’ farm close to the North Sea. We were many kilometers from the nearest town and far from the main roads; it was a good place to hide. My grandparents thought Jacob was my son. Grandfather called him ‘the little Jewish bastard’ when he thought I couldn’t hear. But we were all right until the Germans marched through and took everything—the livestock, the half-grown potatoes, the grain we had stored for the animals. After that, it was bad. I traded furniture for fish. We burned the floorboards for heat. There were weeks we ate soup made with nothing but wild mushrooms and onions. This is bad for a growing child, you know? I fear that Jacob will never be even as tall as his father, who was not a big man. But he is smart, my Jacob. You see it, don’t you? He is his mother’s son.”
“Does he know about her?” Zorah asked.
Esther seemed startled by the question. “Yes. No. I mean, in the beginning I would tell him bedtime stories about his mama and his papa, what they looked like, how much they loved their little boy. We would say prayers for them, and I would make him promise always to remember their good names.
“But then I worried what would happen if a soldier stopped us and asked about his father. So I stopped talking about them, and when he called me Mama, I said, ‘Here I am.’ And it is true that I love him as much as his own mother. And it is true that I had her permission to love and be loved by her son, but …”
Esther stopped and pressed her hands together. “Someday I will tell him. I only pray that he will forgive me and still call me Mama.”
“But what made you come to Palestine?” Zorah asked. “Did the parents speak of it? Did the mother tell you to bring him here if she did not return?”
“They were not Zionists like some of them here,” said Esther. “They were not religious, either, though they never ate pork. Madame said it was just their custom. They were good people, kind people, hardworking.”
“But why didn’t you just stay in your grandparents’ house and raise Jacob there? This was not your journey to make. The boy might have died on the way. Didn’t you know how dangerous it would be?”
“Do you know how dangerous it is for a Jew in Poland today?” Esther said, bitterly. “Jacob is circumcised. Someday, he would be found out, and what would become of him? He would discover the truth of his birth, and what could he do? He would hate me, and why not? Poland is filled with such hatred, you cannot imagine.
“Not far from where my grandparents lived, there was a Jewish family, a dairyman and his sons. One of the boys returned to the father’s house; the only one who survived, I think. The neighbors saw him and clubbed him to death on the road. In broad daylight they did this. They dragged his body to a ditch and pissed on it, and then boasted about what they had done. The men went around telling the story like it was something to be proud of. In Poland they say, ‘Too bad they didn’t kill all of the Yids.’
“Everything there is evil, poisoned. How could I let Jacob stay there? I could not stay there, myself. So I took the coat with the coins in the lining, which I never touched, not even when we were eating grass soup, and the coat took us to Italy, where we fell in with some people looking for a way to get to Palestine. I gave them some money and they got us onto a boat and now, miss, I come to my question.”
Esther looked directly at Zorah for the first time and said, “Before we got on the boat to come here, I walked into the sea and made myself a Jew. Like a baptism. That is how it is done, yes?”
“Yes,” said Zorah. “That is how it is done.”