Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [126]
After each crushing setback for Richard, Leah felt a swell of victory. It came as a relief for him to know that the honeymoon would soon be over and he could return to the familiar surroundings of the store in Salisbury.
In the end, he no longer attempted to make love to her, but fell quickly asleep from an accumulation of weariness and medication. While he slept, Leah found contentment watching him thrash, again unable to perform. Leah knew a sensation of fulfillment she had never known.
The annulment came six months later. Most of that time Leah had spent with her mother in Baltimore. Hannah knew, Hannah consoled, Hannah had been right about men all along. In order to avoid a public scandal, or the airing of Leah’s charges that Richard was impotent, the Schneiders gave up their claims for repayment of the contract money in view of the “damage” done to Leah’s fragile psyche.
After the annulment papers were signed, Erma seized the wardrobe and four Gladstone bags. Leah returned to her mother’s flat as impoverished as when she had gone.
1917–1918
WAR! WAR! WAR! WAR!
Leah checked the mailbox in the vestibule when she heard the shriek from upstairs, unmistakably the voice of her mother.
“Gevalt! Vay iss mir! Got in himmel!” Hannah cried in unabashed anguish. “God in heaven! Have mercy!”
Leah ran up the steps and flung open the door to see her mother on the overstuffed sofa, being ministered to by Fanny and Pearl with cold compresses to the forehead.
“Momma!” Leah cried. “What happened?”
“My heart! My heart!” Hannah wept, bouncing between Yiddish and English.
“Will somebody tell me what’s going on!”
That no good shmuck of a brother!” Fanny pointed to Lazar, who, with Uncle Hyman, cowered near the upright piano.
“He enlisted in the Navy!” Pearl cried.
“A thirty-year-old man with bad eyes and a weak back. What do they need him for, a cripple’s brigade?” Hannah said, coming to a sitting position. “So, you’re going so you should join your brother, Saul, in the ground?” Upon mentioning the deceased, Hannah went into another cycle of wailing.
“Shame!” Leah joined the chorus of banshees. “Shame, shame, shame.”
“Momma,” Lazar said, trying to wedge in a sentence edgewise. “I have a very special profession which is badly needed. It’s not like I’m going to be a foot soldier.”
“Need!” Leah shouted. “So maybe the great American Navy needs you more than your mother and sisters? Nu, be a great big mister hero and leave us here to starve.”
“Gevalt!” Hannah wailed.
“Nobody under this roof is going to starve,” Uncle Hyman interrupted as he pounded a proud hand on Lazar’s shoulder.
“He’s half blind,” Hannah said.
“As my personal contribution to the war effort, I will continue to pay Lazar’s salary to you, Hannahile. If I so much as miss a single paycheck, my name is not Hyman Diamond.”
When the choir of rebuttals had simmered down, Uncle Hyman continued. “And what is more, you have my sincere word of honor that when this boy returns from the war, I will establish him in his own drugstore.”
“And what if he doesn’t return, or what if he comes back in a basket without arms and legs?”
“Or without eyes?”
“Or shell-shocked?”
“Enough, dammit!” Lazar snapped with an authority they were not used to. He walked over to Hannah and squeezed her shoulder firmly. “I’m going, Momma,” he said softly; “that’s all there is to it.”
FOR THE FIRST time in its American experience, the Jewish population was sizable enough to respond to a national call to arms, and for the first time since biblical days the Jews had a country they loved fiercely. They were swept up by the war fever.
The initial hysteria of the Balaban women was soon transformed, like a miracle, into a feeling of thundering patriotism. A little pennant with a blue star was hung in the shop window, denoting a home with a son in the armed forces.
Lazar’s photograph went up on the mantel in a place of honor, next