Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [117]
But Saul couldn’t whip the entire town, particularly when adults took up the banner of Jew-baiting with crude “Hymie” jokes. Moses had forbidden his children to play with the goyim and shiksas. However, they all had their secret gentile friends, but could never bring them home.
Although Moses ranted against it, the boys played the godless games of baseball, basketball, and football and became quite good at them. This opened a small passageway for them into the “other” world. For the most part, the Balaban children were isolated and clung together.
The house of the Balabans inevitably became permeated by the lovelessness between Hannah and Moses and between Moses and his children. It was especially hard for the daughters, who were growing up with a deeply etched loathing of their father. The Sabbath was a bad day that angered and saddened the girls, because they knew it was Hannah’s duty to make sex with their father.
From their earliest memories, they watched their mother in pain afterward, oftentimes holding her back and grimacing. Although Hannah rarely spoke to them of it openly, they knew and they hated.
“Be careful of the boys,” Hannah warned; “they will only bring you suffering.” The legacy had reached a new generation.
Each year Hannah’s pain grew more severe and the alienation of the daughters from Moses heightened. The prospect of becoming mature women was encased in fear.
The house divided began to molder. And Baltimore, with its large Jewish community and many caring relatives, expanded in their minds as a fantasy place, a nirvana, an end to the perpetual suffering.
The proposition of a move was always on the table and rarely did a month pass without Hannah’s bringing it up.
“So what by you is the distinct honor of living in Havre de Grace, Maryland?” Hannah would demand.
“Do you have, in your noggin, any idea what it would cost to live in Baltimore?”
“You’re a meshugga, Moses Balaban. You can’t even earn a living here. Without me shnorring Uncle Hyman a couple of times a year, we would have had to close this miserable business years ago.”
“How can you explain finances to a woman? Look at this kitchen. You bake for three armies. You think I don’t know that the children give away enough cakes to supply a bakery to goyim friends they have made behind my back?”
“What has that got to do with moving to Baltimore? At least in Baltimore, I can start again making fancy gowns. Believe me, well make out much better. And in Baltimore—”
“Woman! You have Baltimore mixed up with Jerusalem.”
“I have Baltimore mixed up with Baltimore. Your sons do not have a single Jewish friend here. Not one. They have no shul to pray in. They can’t live a day without hearing dirty words following them.”
“A Jew can live anywhere, so long as he keeps the laws. It says so in the Talmud.”
“And where in the Talmud does it say the girls will find husbands in Havre de Grace? In a few years they will start becoming eligible for marriage. Husbands you expect will suddenly appear from the Susquehanna River?”
“We’ll find, we’ll find. Don’t worry, we’ll make for them good shiddachs when the time comes.”
“How? This is America. You can’t make matches like they were made in the old country. They must live in a place where they can meet Jewish boys.”
The discussion always ended with Moses slamming the door to his shop and locking himself in. It was his sanctuary and he davened in prayer, asking forgiveness for his wife’s stupidity.
After a decade of this, Hannah secretly plotted to leave with the girls. By scrimping and cutting corners, at which she had become a genius, and taking in alterations that kept her sewing far into the night, she was able to save a little money. It grew more urgent as the girls became older. Hannah knew in her heart what Moses feared most. The cheap bastard was quivering with fright that he might have to give them each a dowry.
She had her cache tucked away in a trunk that held a number of dresses she had sewn for the girls’ trousseaus. Moses, who never revealed his true earnings, had his cache beneath the floorboards