The first thing I remember is hearing Nadianka sing out my name. “Dó-vee-dl R-r-ross-kess,” a rolling Russian r and coloratura soprano rising above the crowd. I barely recognize her in her pageboy cut and lavender short-sleeved summer dress. “Do bin ikh!” I respond, “I’m right here.” There’s a moment’s hesitation. Do I embrace my aunt, whom I’ve never seen before? I kiss her gloved hand and she laughs appreciatively.
“Such a cavalier! Masha’s trained you well.”
“Grisha was detained at the TOZ Colony until tonight,” Nadianka apologizes, and because he also took the car to work we need a porter to shlep my huge valise to the first available droshky. I’ve packed all the wrong clothes, never expecting that this summer would be the hottest on record. In Mother’s photo album, everyone is in wool.
I want to linger awhile in the massive tsarist-era train station, trying to imagine my parents’ leavetaking on their wedding day, when the whole gang sang them Broderzon’s stirring hymn. But already we’re surrounded by a group of predatory drivers, the famous izvoshtshikes, one of whom grabs my valise, and provoked by its foreign make, starts to inveigh against the latest news even as he leads us out into the blazing sun.
“Have you heard? Damn their souls to hell! The Russkies have jumped into bed with the Germans! A fine pair of lovers! Two syphilitics with moustaches. What are the Jews in America saying about it? Is it true that Roosevelt is a Jew?”
Nadianka and I exchange smiles. In my knapsack I am carrying yesterday’s editions of the Warsaw dailies Moment and Haynt, which are filled with the pact between Molotov and Ribbentrop. The Yiddish press agrees with our cabby that it’s bad for the Jews.
By now he’s swearing under his breath, whether from the heat or the weight of my luggage I cannot tell. Parshi’veh remi’zeh is all I make out, which sound like obscenities to me, but when I return home Felix Dawang will laugh and tell me that it’s Vilna slang for a coach-house, a corruption of the French remise pour cheveaux, dating back to Napoleon’s legendary conquest of Vilna. With a flourish of his whip, our driver pulls out of the station, veering so sharply to the right that he cuts off an oncoming droshky whose driver yells “Zol men mit dayne kishkes oysmestn di Zavalne-gas!” to which our driver replies, “Me zol dikh firn af Zaretshe!” We happen, in fact, to have just entered Zavalna, the very street our interlocutor offered to measure with our driver’s guts.
“Nadianka,” I whisper. “‘They should take you to Zaretshe?’ What does he mean?”
“Zarzecze is the new Jewish cemetery. Your grandmother’s buried there.”
“‘Drop dead!’ in other...
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