Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [77]
So Mariupol was heaven? Not exactly.
The Borokovs had two sons, both older than me and both of them in Palestine studying at the famous Herzlia Gymnasium. I therefore not only had a bedroom to myself, I had a closet filled with clothing the sons had outgrown. Tante Sonia had burned the clothing I arrived in, particularly my coat.
Because Uncle Boris had sons in Eretz Israel, he was a self-proclaimed Zionist. He bragged endlessly of the great sacrifice he had made for the redemption of Palestine.
The third child was a daughter, Tilly, who was a year younger than myself. To be quite frank about it, Tilly was a real mishkeit, an ugly. She was about twice my size to start with, and from there it got worse.
When I was told I would receive a salary of twelve rubles a week, I should have become immediately suspicious. Nobody pays anybody so much money for nothing. Tante Sonia announced she would send eight rubles a week directly to my family. The other four rubles would go for my room and board. Somehow, it didn’t seem quite right, but here it was and here I was.
For this enormous salary, of which I received nothing, I worked sixty-two hours a week. If there is anything filthier than killing chickens, it is the coal business. Despite my mounting disillusions, there was the knowledge I was keeping my family alive, although after a day’s work shoveling coal it gave me very little satisfaction.
Uncle Boris had an office on the docks. Every day he promised that I would work myself into the office to a nice desk job, but until then I had to learn the coal business from the ground up.
My first job required little genius. I worked in the coal packaging yard. This was for smaller sales. So I shoveled from the bins into burlap sacks, sewed the sacks, and stacked them on wagons. Then I went into coal delivery, another profession that didn’t require a university education.
Later I graduated to a checker. When a shipload came to the docks, I had to see to it that the correct tonnage was delivered to the yard and oversee the transfer to coal trains. After ten to twelve hours of work and another two hours to clean myself up, I was often too tired to eat, despite the fantastic meals. The only day off was the Sabbath and I could scarcely drag myself out of bed to go to synagogue.
MARIUPOL HAD problems for me other than the Borokovs. We were a small number of Jews living among a large number of Ukrainians, a formula for catastrophe. There was no real Jewish communal life—we only went through the motions. There was neither a Jewish marketplace nor schools. Cultural affairs, such as Zionist meetings, were frowned upon even by the rabbis and had to be held in secret. The Borokovs admonished me not to use Yiddish. They spoke Russian at all times, even in synagogue.
The Jews of Mariupol had learned their place, to shut up. With Russia boiling from one end to the other with massive discontent, the Borokovs pretended nothing was happening. Nonetheless, as invisible as the Jews tried to make themselves, the Ukrainians reminded us regularly that we were dirty Jews. For me it was a very miserable existence, without a friend, to say nothing of—that “God should strike them all dead”—the coal business.
There was another matter that was not the least of my problems—namely, Tilly. She let me know in not so subtle ways that she didn’t object to having a cousin living under the same roof.
Each night I would have to scrub in the yard for over an hour and as soon as my shirt and pants came off, Tilly appeared like magic. A few times I scalded myself jumping into the hot tub to avoid letting her see me naked.
Tilly found the oddest times, both day and night, to come into my room for incomplete reasons. Maybe I needed something? Did I get my laundry back? Would I like to smell this new perfume all the way from Paris? She had it down to a science, making me squirm.
I, in turn, tried to be friendly and enrich her with the