In His Father's Footsteps Read online

  Her nightmares started again the night after Max was born, now she had a tiny being she loved to focus her terrors on. She wanted to do everything she could to protect him. But if the worst happened again, how could she? Her mother hadn’t been able to protect Emmanuelle’s little sister, Françoise, from being shot, nor could Emmanuelle protect her son if the world went mad again, and they took her, Jakob, and Max. What could she do now to protect her son from a dangerous world and an uncertain future? It tormented her as she held him and nursed him. He looked so innocent and at peace at her breast, and she already loved him more than anything in the world.

  Jakob said something to Izzie about it when he went back to work. He explained that though Emmanuelle was a sensible woman, she was certain the Holocaust would happen again, even in the States.

  “You have to get her to stop thinking that way,” Izzie said. “She’s young, she can’t ruin her life like that, or yours, or your son’s. This is America. It could never happen here. This is the land of freedom and equality. The Nazis could never have gotten control here, and they never will. It was a phenomenon that happened in Germany. They had a gang mentality, and followed Hitler blindly. This country is all about justice. No one wants to kill the Jews here. That’s why we came. I know what you both went through was horrible but you’re safe now, and so is your baby. It’s only been a year and a half since you were liberated. She’ll drive the poor kid crazy if she is terrified about another Holocaust all the time. Let’s hope she’ll calm down in a few years. Try to do everything you can to help her.”

  “I will,” Jakob said. He had his own terrors to contend with, and their son would probably be affected by his fears about their security too. “I have a favor to ask you, Izzie. We need to have the baby circumcised. Normally, we’d have a bris, but we don’t really have close friends here. You’re my closest friend, and Emmanuelle and I don’t go to temple. My family never did. We weren’t religious, we were culturally Jewish, but not practicing. Do you know a mohel through your temple who would do it? You could be there too if you like.”

  “Of course.” Izzie was touched to be asked. “I’ll call our rabbi right away.”

  “Thank you. They’ll be in the hospital for three more days, and then they’ll come home, and we’ll find out what parenthood is really like,” Jakob said, grinning. Normally, a circumcision would be performed on the eighth day after birth, but since Jakob wasn’t religious, he was happy to have the mohel do it whenever he could.

  “Don’t expect to get a good night’s sleep for the next five years, maybe ten,” Izzie kidded him. “First you have night feedings, then you have nightmares, after that you have a drink of water they need at two in the morning. After that they want to sleep in your bed for about two years, then there’s a gorilla under the bed, or an elephant in the closet. Eventually they sleep through the night, but by then you can’t because you haven’t in so long. I hope you got some sleep before the baby was born, because you won’t for a long time.” He was laughing as he said it, and Jakob grinned, and suspected it was all true.

  Izzie called his rabbi for him after that, and got the name of the mohel who would perform the circumcision at home. Emmanuelle was afraid the baby would bleed too much, and Jakob reassured her that the mohel did it all the time. She was ready to protect him with her life and he was only two days old.

  Jakob called the mohel and he promised to come to their apartment on the eighth day, and Jakob told Emmanuelle when he visited her that night after work. She looked content with the baby in her arms, and as though she had been a mother forever. He made a comment about having another one and she said again that Max was all they needed, and he realized it was probably too soon after the delivery to talk about more babies. But he would love to have a little girl too, or another son. Seeing Max made him realize that a family of several children would be wonderful, and they would be less focused than they would be on an only child, which might prove to be hard on Max. Izzie had said that too, and when his son, David, had died, their whole world had caved in around them, and Naomi hadn’t recovered from it and probably never would. Jakob didn’t want that to happen to them, God forbid.

  When Jakob left the store on his first day back at work after Max’s birth, Izzie handed him an envelope, and Jakob looked at him in surprise.

  “Put that in the bank for Max,” Izzie said in a gruff voice. “He can use it when he’s older,” he said and patted Jakob on the shoulder as his eyes filled with tears. Izzie had been so good to him ever since he’d come to work for him. He was even more moved when he opened the envelope after he left work. There was a check for five thousand dollars in it, made out to Jakob. He was stunned, it was an enormous amount of money. He told Emmanuelle about it as soon as he got to the hospital, and she was equally amazed and touched. It was more money than Jakob had seen since before the war. Izzie was coming to Max’s bris with the mohel from his temple when they got home. He was becoming like a father to them, and Jakob was like an adopted son for him. It was a blessing for them all, and would be a blessing for Max one day to have a surrogate grandfather, since he had no real ones. They sat and talked about it quietly for a long time, about how blessed they had been to find him.

  “I wish he would hire you to work in the store, instead of your working for that cheapskate Harry Rosen,” Jakob said. She had to be back at work in ten days, and hadn’t even left the hospital yet, but in Rosen’s mind since she wasn’t digging ditches, she could come to work and sew. Izzie hadn’t offered her a job. Jakob hoped he would sometime, but he was afraid to ask after all he’d already done.

  “I’m all right at the factory,” she said, the baby in her arms. He wanted to nurse all the time, and her milk was starting to come in. She had a lot of it, but was going to stop nursing when she went back to work, and she was already sad about it. She loved feeding him, and holding him, and watching him sleep. She had held him all day, and hated it when the nurses took him to the nursery to check his vital signs. He was healthy and she glowed every time she looked at him. Jakob was proud of both of them and hated to leave at the end of visiting hours but they would be home soon, and he could be with them all the time.

  On Tuesday they went home. Jakob picked them up at lunchtime, and they took a taxi back to the apartment. It was a long walk up the stairs for Emmanuelle, who still had stitches from the birth. Jakob held the baby while they walked up slowly, and Emmanuelle sat down on the steps several times. They finally reached the apartment, where Jakob had set up the bassinet next to their bed, which he had left open, so Emmanuelle could lie down as soon as they got home. He had bought enough food for several days and filled the small icebox. And then he went back to work by subway, and the downstairs neighbor, who was going to babysit for Max while his mother was at work, came to see the baby and help Emmanuelle. Her name was Hannah Friedman, and Emmanuelle had agreed to pay her three dollars a day to take care of Max. It was a big chunk out of her salary, but she couldn’t afford to stay home with no salary either.

  Emmanuelle wanted to help Jakob, and they saved every penny they could. There would be no movies anymore, and no dinners out, even on special occasions. They had to be serious now, for their son, although they had never been frivolous about money. And Jakob had already started to set aside money for his education before he was born. He wanted him to go to the best schools, and get the very best education. He didn’t want him ever to be a janitor, or even to work in the diamond market. He wanted him to work in a bank one day, or be a lawyer or a doctor. He never wanted him to be poor and worried about money, as they were. Jakob had read about restitution for some people who had lost valuable properties and art in the war, but they had to have documentation and he had none. Everything was lost, and he didn’t qualify for restitution. They would just have to save everything they could for their son. That was Jakob’s primary goal now.

  The mohel came to do the circumcision three days
after Emmanuelle and the baby came home. Izzie and Jakob watched as the mohel did his job, Emmanuelle couldn’t and cried the entire time, while she held Max, and the mohel gave him a drop of wine to soothe him. He cried for a few minutes and then settled down. The nurse had warned them that he’d be fussy for a few days afterward, especially when he had a wet diaper and it burned him on the incision the mohel had made. But he had done a good job of it. And Jakob was satisfied that they had done what they needed to.

  It broke Emmanuelle’s heart to leave the baby every day when she went to work, and she loved the weekends when she could care for the baby all day herself. Jakob helped her, and had become an expert at changing diapers. They had to buy formula when Emmanuelle weaned him, which was an added expense too. They figured it all out down to the last penny. Jakob was grateful when Izzie gave him a raise in January. It all helped.

  In April, Izzie called Jakob into his office, opened the safe, and carefully unwrapped a stone that he said was extremely rare. It was a flawless twenty-carat fancy intense yellow diamond. He was considering going in on it with four other dealers, with the intent to sell it immediately to an important jeweler. He was planning to invest a considerable amount in it, and Jakob was dazzled when he saw it. Jakob took it around to the other dealers at Izzie’s request, and then brought it back to Izzie.

  It took three weeks to make the deal and in May, the five diamond dealers bought it, and two weeks later sold it to a retailer they knew was interested and had a customer for it. Izzie made a hefty profit on it, and gave Jakob a commission, since he had dealt with the other dealers, and Izzie said he had been very helpful. Jakob was shocked when he saw how much Izzie had given him. It was half his annual salary, but they had sold the stone for a big price, at a huge profit, and Izzie had the largest ownership of anyone in the group.

  “This can be a very lucrative business,” he said to Jakob as he handed him the check. “You still have a lot to learn, but I think you have a feeling for it.” Jakob took it seriously and enjoyed it, and he was impressed by the stones and the amount of money that changed hands. Izzie’s storefront was unimpressive, and he wanted to keep it that way. The real business all happened in his office, with the important stones he bought in collaboration with other wholesalers, and how fast they moved them. “You should stay in the business,” he told Jakob, “you’ll make money at it.” Jakob could see that, and was grateful for the opportunity Izzie was giving him. And from then on, Jakob was part of all Izzie’s deals, and made a commission on all their transactions. It altered his income considerably. In July, he told Emmanuelle that he wanted her to stay home with the baby. The increase in his salary was more than what she was making sewing for Harry Rosen.

  “Are you serious?” She looked worried. “What if Izzie gets tired of you, or you have an argument and he fires you?” Jakob smiled at her reaction, he was used to her negative responses, always imagining worst-case scenarios.

  “We couldn’t live on your salary anyway. If that happens, we both have to go out and find good jobs that pay us well. So I think it’s safe for you to quit Rosen’s now. You’ve been there for two years, and you’d make more money scrubbing floors than decorating his ugly blouses and sweaters.” She didn’t disagree, but she was nervous about giving up a job, and being totally dependent on his commissions from Izzie. In the end, Jakob convinced her, and she gave Harry Rosen two weeks’ notice that she was leaving. Even after two years of hard work and dedication, he told her how ungrateful she was for his sponsoring her, but she had given him his pound of flesh by then, and he knew it.

  She thanked him the day she left, and he grudgingly wished her luck. She was sad to leave her fellow sewers but thrilled not to have to work anymore, and to be able to stay home with her baby. Max was now seven months old and a strapping baby. She could hardly make it up all six flights of stairs carrying him and his stroller when she took him out. He was a happy child, always smiling and laughing, and he squealed with delight when he saw her or his father. He loved Izzie too, who met them in the park sometimes on weekends, and adored playing with him. Max was a joy to all who knew him.

  “He’ll be an important man one day,” Jakob would say firmly, as though trying to instill him with his own dreams for the boy. “He’ll work hard, and get a good education, and have a big job.”

  “What if he wants to be an artist or a musician?” Emmanuelle would tease him.

  “He’ll have to talk to me about it,” Jakob would say sternly. “He has generations of bankers in his bloodline. He’ll be a rich man one day,” Jakob said, wishing that for him, which Emmanuelle knew was no guarantee that he’d be happy. She wanted her son to do what he wanted and believed in, and follow his passions. But Jakob was so serious about business, making money, and loved what he did for Izzie, that he was setting a good example for his son. Jakob was only twenty-seven years old, and had been in America for two years, but he was steadily building a nest egg for his family from the commissions he made. He put everything in the bank, except what they needed to pay rent and buy groceries. Emmanuelle made her own clothes and the baby’s. She spent nothing they didn’t have to.

  They celebrated Max’s first birthday during Chanukah, and invited Izzie to dinner. Emmanuelle lit the candles and chanted the prayers and covered her head while she did, and Jakob and Izzie wore yarmulkes. Max watched them in fascination, and at the end of dinner, Emmanuelle served the birthday cake she had made, with two candles on it, which included “one to grow on.” They had a wonderful warm evening together.

  Emmanuelle and Jakob spent a quiet New Year’s Eve at home, and, after Max fell asleep in his crib, toasted each other with a small bottle of champagne Jakob had bought. He had outgrown the bassinet months before, and she had returned it to her neighbor.

  “We should go out to dinner more often,” Jakob said, as they sat on their small couch with the sagging springs with his arm around her, and sipped the champagne he had gotten them. It brought back memories for him, of New Year’s in Vienna with the best champagne lavishly poured and beautiful women in evening gowns dancing at his parents’ home, or when he was out with friends in the best nightclubs. It was a life he’d never know again.

  “It’s too expensive,” Emmanuelle said about going out to dinner.

  “It would be good for us,” he said reasonably. They were both young. She was only twenty-five, and they never went anywhere, and were always saving money. Izzie had chided him for it recently and reminded him that they were too young to stay at home all the time. They needed to have some fun. Jakob had made enough money now to take her out occasionally, at least to a neighborhood restaurant, but they were happy at home and Emmanuelle preferred to cook rather than to spend money.

  They finished the champagne, and had two glasses each, went to bed and made love, and were asleep in each other’s arms by two A.M., and an hour later, Max woke up for his night feeding, and Emmanuelle put him in their bed with his bottle, and he went back to sleep with them. The phone woke all three of them at seven A.M. on New Year’s Day. It was Izzie, and Jakob was shocked when he realized he was crying.

  “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Naomi. She had a heart attack last night and died before the ambulance could come. They tried to revive her, but they couldn’t. She’s had heart problems since David died. She just couldn’t face living without him, no matter what I did. He was her whole life. We’re burying her tomorrow.” It was a day later than it would have been normally, but they couldn’t bury her on New Year’s Day. “We’ll sit shiva for her tonight if you want to come. You can bring the baby.” He knew they never left him, and it would cheer him up to see the chubby smiling baby he loved as much as a grandson.

  “We’ll be there,” Jakob said. “I’m so sorry.” He told Emmanuelle what had happened when he hung up. She had gotten out of bed to get Max’s bottle, and got back in to hold him. They had both seen so muc
h death in the camp, sometimes she felt numb to it, but she was sorry for Izzie, who loved his wife and had no one left now.

  They went to the Horowitzes’ apartment on the Upper West Side by subway that night. Emmanuelle was wearing an elegant black silk dress she had made without a pattern, remembering one of her mother’s simple designs, her head was covered, and Jakob was wearing a black suit, and one of the ties she had made for him, and the baby was wearing a little black velvet suit she had made for his birthday with a white satin collar and a little black satin bow tie, and black patent leather shoes she had bought in a secondhand shop, where she bought her own.

  The apartment was crowded with mourners when they got there, old friends of theirs, men whom Izzie did business with, and members of their temple. The rabbi was there, talking to Izzie about the service the next day. Izzie’s business was going to be closed all that week while they sat shiva for Naomi. He looked devastated. She was his only living relative. He had now lost both his son and his wife. He embraced Emmanuelle and Jakob with tears rolling down his cheeks and looked as though he had aged ten years overnight. Naomi was only fifty-nine years old, but her spirit had died when her son did. She had no relatives either, and Izzie was alone in the world now, except for his friends, and the young couple he had grown so fond of. Jakob was almost like a son to him, they stayed until the last guests left, and Emmanuelle helped him wash the dishes and glasses. Many of his friends had left food for him, there were baskets all over the kitchen, and the refrigerator was full of casseroles he was never going to eat. He looked bereft as Jakob consoled him.