Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [153]
Momma ate and scanned the coverage in the newspapers. She mumbled that her photograph in that Hearst rag did not do her justice.
“I found something in the dark horror of my prison cell, a cause, a cause I knew I would die for if necessary.”
“Don’t throw yourself into causes so fast,” Bubba answered. “You’re just coming into the bloom of life, Leah. You put this behind you. Life is life. Always remember that.”
“Momma, I’ve met Nathan Zadok. It was he who brought the lawyer who got us freed.”
Bubba did not react with joy. “Leah, you had a bad, bad experience. Tomorrow life starts all over.”
“Yes, you’re so right. A new start and maybe, just maybe, Nathan ...”
“Nathan Zadok is a fast-talking Charlie. I’ve known these radicals all my life. It’s not that I’m saying marry a Rothschild, but a church mouse is wealthy beside a Nathan Zadok.”
“Wealth? What is wealth? This little man, can you believe, speaks fifteen different languages. He knows Tolstoy, Shakespeare. He reads Jack London in Russian. The Communists are going to do something about the class struggle, the poverty, the lynchings in the South. They want to make a better world for children like Molly.”
I once again came in for a round of hugs and kisses.
“Don’t go falling hook, line, and sinker for no fast-talking Charlie,” Bubba repeated.
“I hear you, Momma, but my heart doesn’t hear you. Do you know, Nathan saw me on the picket line and fell in love with the back of my head.”
“So, that proves he’s a stupid as far as I’m concerned. Leah, I’m hoping that your next marriage, God willing, will be your final one. These boys coming in from the old country are damaged merchandise.
Wild radical ideas foam from their mouths. They don’t understand half of what they’re talking about. I have never, never seen one of those shmucks laugh.”
“I have so very much to learn from Nathan.”
“What you’ll learn is the inside of a tenement, with a leaky roof and no heat. Let them save themselves before they save the world.”
“Shakespeare ... Tolstoy ... Jack London ... and he will teach me what Marx and Lenin will accomplish for the proletariat.”
“Leah, you’ve always been a fragile little flower. You’ve just gone through a horrible experience. Give yourself a chance to breathe.”
“The Jewish Workers Federation is making enormous plans for me and the others of the Ginzburg Brothers Twelve.”
“They’re nothing but a bunch of Communist sheep in wolves’ clothing, using the misery of a slave shop to exploit you. Once, please, for God’s sake, be sensible. Nathan Zadok is a little pisher with a big mouth, who will never have two nickels to rub together. And where was your Mr. Hero today?”
“He was on important Party business.”
Guess who rang the doorbell? Nathan Zadok came in with copies of the Freiheit the Yiddish-language Communist newspaper, with a front page filled with pictures of the release of the Ginzburg Brothers Twelve.
Bubba picked up the hot-water pan and emptied it and suddenly began to mop up the kitchen, which didn’t need mopping, while Momma fed Nathan. He ate like he had just gotten off a hunger strike himself.
In no time at all, Bubba and Nathan Zadok were arguing about America.
“So let me tell you about America,” he said bitterly. “I arrive without a penny to my name. My Uncle Samuel, who owns four department stores in New England, didn’t have for me the time of day. He said, ‘I give you America, Nathan, now go get it.’”
“That’s the way we all start here, with nothing,” Bubba slashed back. “You want that you should be a millionaire on arrival?”
Nathan recounted how his family had dumped him in New York with a few dollars in his pockets. “They hated me because I knew about the failure of Zionism and Palestine, firsthand.”
“Don’t you speak against Zionism under my roof,” Bubba threatened.
He went on about a room he had in Harlem with a mean landlord. “Every morning I got up at four-thirty. That’s when the Forward, a reactionary newspaper, no better than Hearst, was put out on the streets. I read the job ads and, with the help of some Jewish-speaking people, found