Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [74]
Nathan felt he had outgrown Wolkowysk, a perennial shtetl town which had doomed itself to live in the past. Moreover there was another mouth to feed, a new baby sister, Bessie.
Nathan returned to Bialystok and remained for two more years. His situation at Mrs. Ginsburg’s boardinghouse improved when Nathan was able to find work during the vacation months as a clerk in a food warehouse, which purveyed to the nearby army camp. Nathan endured ruthless harassment and was sometimes roughed up by the soldiers, but the food and the money to be earned were too powerful an incentive to quit.
He graduated from the living-room couch into a room with three other students, and his “eat days” now offered more substantial meals.
IN WOLKOWYSK, a sudden disaster all but turned the family into wards of charity. Yehuda suffered a minor stroke and would not be able to work for an indefinite period.
To make matters more distressing, Uncle Sam in America had fallen on hard times. America went off the silver standard and this brought the mining industry in Colorado to the brink of collapse. Sam carried large amounts of credit on his books, mostly staking miners, and those debts were now uncollectable.
Yehuda and Sophie came to the wrenching decision to send as many children off to live with relatives as they could place. Mordechai, naturally, was to be afforded the best piece of the chicken. Yehuda got him to Vilna first, where he was safely tucked away in the yeshiva and fully supported.
On the day of his fifteenth birthday, Nathan received an urgent letter to return home.
NATHAN
Wolkowysk and Kiev, 1911
I, THE OLDEST SON, Nathan Zadok, came to my father’s bedside. His beard hung outside the sheet halfway to his stomach and his eyes drooped with world-weariness. He shrugged as he recounted to me the gravity of the family problems. Groaning with despair, Father told me I had to leave the gymnasium.
Homes had been found for two of my brothers and two of my sisters. As for my own fate, I had to help support the family. Had my father and mother found a situation for me? My mother’s sister, Tante Sonia, was married to a well-off coal merchant in Mariupol and had offered to take me in and give me a job. Mariupol? Mariupol! So why didn’t they send me to Mongolia?
I hid in the woodshed and wept all night. I considered running away, but really there was no choice but to obey.
My father at least showed a twinge of guilt. While preparing me for this trip to the end of the earth, he showed me more kindness than he ever had before. You can be sure the magic name of Mordechai was missing. I said goodbyes to Reuben, Matthias, Rifka, and Sarah as they went in all directions to live with mishpocha.
Soon my own ticket arrived. If proverbs could be sold in the open marketplace, the Jews would have all the wealth in Russia. My father sent me off with the great wisdom:
“If fortune calls, offer him a seat.”
To which my mother added, “If rich people could pay poor people to die for them, the poor would make a fine living.”
Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, was over three thousand miles away. By train it meant five days and nights, during which seven changes had to be made. My belongings easily fit in one straw suitcase, which was sent ahead by baggage mail. I carried a package of dried food, because there wasn’t always something to eat at the stations. In many cities along the route, Jews were not allowed to leave the train station area and enter town. I had five rubles to see me to Mariupol and the first memory of Momma crying over me.
Always on the trains, hoodlums and soldiers looked for Jews to victimize. My shabby coat would give me away. I climbed upon the wide slab like a shelf in third class, balled up in a corner,