Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [155]
Cheers.
The biggest night was in Detroit. We collected over three hundred dollars.
Now was my turn. Even though I was only four and not old enough to be a Young Pioneer, I was dressed in uniform with a blue skirt, white blouse, and red kerchief and I would march out with fifteen or twenty Pioneers behind me and we would sing:
“Fly higher,
And higher, And hiiiiigher,
Our emblem is The Soviet star,
With every propeller Roaring RED FRONT,
Defending the U.S.S.R.!”
When the cheering stopped, we would sing our encore:
“One, two, three
Pioneers are we,
Fighting for
The working class, Against the bourgeoisie,
HEY!”
And we’d hold up our fists in the Communist salute. Momma and the Ginzburg Brothers ladies would come to the front of the stage and she would hold me up to the audience. The Freiheit Choral Society returned to the stage and everyone in the audience arose.
“Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation—A better worlds in birth.
No more tradition chains shall bind us,
The earth shall have a new foundation,
We have been one
WE SHALL BE ALL
’TIS THE FINAL CONFLICT LET EACH STAND IN HIS PLACE
THE INTERNATIONAL SOVIET SHALL BE THE HUMAN RACE
THE INTERNATIONAL SOVIET SHALL BE THE HUMAN RACE”
Sometimes we sang it in Yiddish. And once, in Boston, we sang it in Italian. And then we would go on to Cincinnati, or Chicago, or Pittsburgh. It was wonderful.
The last stop on the tour was Hartford. Momma and Nathan Zadok were married in a rabbi’s home, because it was Sunday and they couldn’t find a judge or justice of the peace. The manager of the tour, Comrade Dworkin, was there for the ceremony. I remember him vividly because he had an ugly, round face and two of his fingers were always brown from nicotine stains and he pinched my cheek with that hand all the time and it smelled bad. Nobody liked Comrade Dworkin, but they couldn’t say so.
I found out later that Comrade Dworkin was a spy for the Central Committee and Nathan had gotten into a lot of trouble. Nathan was called to New York on charges made by Comrade Dworkin, for various crimes against the Party. The worst of these was getting married without permission and getting married by a rabbi in a religious ceremony.
Normally, he would have been thrown out of the Party, but they gave him a year’s probation, because Momma still had some value as a member of the Ginzburg Brothers Twelve.
I was told to call Nathan Zadok “Daddy,” even though he wasn’t my real father. My real father was named Joseph Kramer and Momma told me he had been killed in the war.
1924
I HAD BEEN promised a baby brother or sister for my sixth birthday. I hoped it would be a brother. On my birthday, I looked everywhere, even in the scary cellar, which was filled with rats and where Zayde made Concord grape wine. I couldn’t find my baby brother anywhere. When Momma and Bubba discovered me, I was shriveled up in a corner, crying.
“So, what’s the matter with my Molly darling?” Bubba asked.
“I was promised a baby brother,” I wept.
“Don’t cry, Molly,” Momma said. “The stork got very busy and he’s running a few days late. Believe me, you’ll get your present.” I did believe her because, in those days, kids my age didn’t know how babies were born. I thought it had something to do with the word “pregnant” and Momma’s belly, because a few weeks later my brother was born and Momma’s belly was gone.
I was allowed to hold him, and from the moment I saw him, I loved him because he was the only thing in the world that really belonged to me.
Bubba took him from me, held him up, and said, “This child is a genius.”
IN THE FIRST seven years Nathan was married to my momma, we moved to seven different cities. The first four were Party assignments and the other moves came when Momma got restless, approximately every ten months.
We always lived on the third or fourth floor and had to walk up, because in the few places that had elevators, they were always out of order. I also remember packing suitcases and going to catch