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A Tale of Two Citizens

A Novel

Skyhorse Publishing

April

Wlodawa, Poland

Hope and sorrow mingled as travelers and those who had come to say good-bye gathered at the train station. Standing in his straightest posture among the mothers and uncles and neighbors, and people from the village who might not even know anyone leaving, but for whom these departures marked a noteworthy event, a ruddy young man of twenty gripped his visa protectively. Every few minutes, he tapped the pocket of his jacket to feel the reassuring outline of the precious steamer ticket. He squared his shoulders more broadly; he was really here, really doing this! Owing to his father, who had already been there for seven years, Yankel Himelbaum was going to America. His legal classification for entry as the minor, unmarried son of an American citizen was stamped right there on the visa he held so proudly.

Tugging at his overcoat, which Yankel wore on top of his jacket because there was no more room in his small suitcase, his little sister, Rifka, looked up at him with adoration. She laughed and sobbed simultaneously, her face busy with the effort, and, as always, she chattered: "Don't forget us, Yankel. What will we do without you? You will send for me, you will, won't you?"

Yankel's older brothers, already married, looked on skeptically. What was the big deal with this America? they wondered. First their father, now Yankel, the one everybody counted on. Even though he was the youngest, it was he who oversaw their small dairy farm. He kept the books like a real businessman and never shied from getting his hands dirty, either, working in the barn and fields by day, and long into the night with the figures and accounting. If something was broken, he fixed it; the two sides of the ledger didn't add up, he made the appropriate financial adjustments until they did. Where the neighbors had hungrily anticipated problems, resentment in the family — the third boy in charge? — none had materialized, for young he might be, but always Yankel knew how to act like a real mensch. Any of the three hired laborers who helped out on the small farm, located a kilometer outside of Wlodawa, would attest to this. Now — the Himelbaums heard the gossip and couldn't entirely disagree with it — who knew what would happen? Yitzak, the eldest son, was spending more and more time in Warsaw, saying he was expanding the family's business opportunities, though he was short on specifics; and Hershel spent half the day in the kitchen with Elke, their mother, kneading, baking. He never looked so happy as when he pulled a perfect challah from the oven. And cakes: he had one for every occasion; he invented occasions so that he could produce one of his "light-as-a-cloud" creations.

The locomotive blared its melancholy call to board, eliciting cries and gasps of separation from the gathered crowd. Yankel had never seen so many people at the station. It must be like the old days that his parents talked about, when it seemed that everyone was fleeing the pogroms, and countless thousands had left. Since that time, in the years immediately following the World War, life for the Jew in Poland had become more acceptable, thanks in large part to the minority-protection clauses that had been added to the peace agreement. A Polish Jew could make a living. He was entitled, at least on paper, to political and civil rights. Lately, though, the anti-Semitism that most gentile Poles seemed to be born with was bubbling to the surface, arousing its equally accessible counterpart: Jewish anxiety. Bolshevism was in the air, and Jews were getting the blame for spreading its subversive message. Jewish poverty was sneered at, Jewish affluence resented. The handsome and capable young man whom everyone admired for his ability to fix what was broken saw that perhaps Poland itself was broken for the Jews. Perhaps, all of Europe — one heard rumors about Germany, and the growing popularity of the Nazi party. So it made sense, the long line of people that had wound around the block the day he'd gone to the American consulate in Warsaw to apply for his visa, and all these people here today, waiting for the train.

But where was Reizel? He'd been looking for her all morning, craning his neck trying to catch sight of her. "Here, Rifkele," he said, momentarily leaving off looking for his girlfriend to take a piece of candy from his pocket and hand it to his distraught little sister. "Here," he said, "when you come to America, all the time I'll give you." Rifka, sniffing back her colliding emotions, peeled the wrapping eagerly.

Was it possible that Reizel wouldn't come? She had promised, but then again, she hadn't kept her feelings about this day a secret. How, in the face of their love, could he leave her? Start a new life without her on the other side of the world? Though their relationship was too respectful for arguments — their lovemaking a driving burst of nature inside an otherwise easygoing compatibility — Yankel never wavered about going to America, at least in front of Reizel. Perhaps in private, he might have second thoughts about pursuing the dream he'd held since his early teenage years — he was in love with his girl, running a reasonably successful business; why should he leave? — but he would quickly dismiss these thoughts. To Reizel's quiet protests he responded with gentle reassurances about the beautiful life he would build for them in a land without prejudice or turmoil, and the promise that he would send for her, soon. And for the moment, at least, she would seem to see the sense of it.

Greatly relieved, he spotted her, walking purposefully and looking straight ahead. Her face showed no emotion; she might as well be making her way through a busy market. Such a little person amidst the throngs, yet she held herself tall with pride, her carriage belying her petite stature. Grabbing Rifka's hand, Yankel nudged the two of them through the crowd toward his sweetheart.

Seeing him, Reizel looked down. It was a gesture to which Yankel had become accustomed, this bending of Reizel's head when they came upon each other. Beside her now, he crooked his finger under her chin and lifted it so that their eyes met. How pale she looked, and such strain in her gaze.

"I'm so sorry, Yankel," Reizel said, looking at him intently. "I am late, there's nothing I could do about it." Where moments before, her face had been a study in stoicism, her eyes now brimmed with tears. His fingers dabbed them lightly.

"Don't worry, Reizele," he said, "we've got a few minutes yet before the train leaves. I'm just so happy to see you. I was afraid for a minute ..."

"No," his girlfriend said, "it's not the train I'm talking about." With uncharacteristic impatience, she brushed his hand from her face. And her head did not lower now. Instead, she looked straight at him, almost defiantly.

"Reizel, will you braid my hair this afternoon, after, after Yankel goes on the train?" The last part of Rifka's sentence came out haltingly, the words themselves reminding her of why Reizel was even here, and so early in the day. Yankel's girlfriend lived with her parents in Lukow, and came to Wlodawa only rarely. But whenever she did come, Rifka loved spending time with her brother's sweetheart, admired her unabashedly, as a sisterless nine-year-old might be wont to do. As for her other brothers' wives, Chava and Leah, they seemed more like her mother, old and old-fashioned. Reizel knew about and spoke of modern things, cities and cinema, and she knew how to be playful. Rifka loved it when Reizel braided her hair and told her stories about the latest fashions from Paris. Paris! Could there be such a place? Where people drank wine with lunch, out of fine crystal goblets?

At the moment, though, it was as if the younger girl hadn't spoken, as though she didn't exist, so intense was the gaze between Yankel and Reizel.

"I'm late, not with the train." Reizel spoke quickly, yet enunciated each word.

Yankel took a minute. "You're ...?"

"Yes," she sharply cut him off.

"You're ..." Yankel heaved a deep breath. "You're sure?"

Now his Reizele allowed her head to fall.

His own head felt disengaged from his surroundings. He might as well be standing in total isolation on a desolate piece of land, surrounded by silence. Time might just as well have stopped. Yankel held the visa in his fist, squeezing it into a wad. The steamer ticket sat like an empty book of matches in his pocket. Useless.

"All aboard," the conductor called. But Yankel knew he wasn't going anywhere today.

Iowa City, Iowa

"You may kiss the bride."

Will Brown, earnest by nature, regarded his bride. He had to lift his head slightly, for in her high-heeled shoes, she stood nearly a head taller than the groom. But they'd rehearsed this moment, worked out how Barbara would lower her head, just so, and he'd raise his so that their lips could meet without the necessity of Will having to get up on his toes. Barbara — Barbara Brown as of this moment — yes, she was very pretty. Will could not recall a time in his life when this face had not produced in him anything short of gladness.

A murmur passed over the room, the chapel filled with people Will had known all his life. Everyone was waiting, he knew, for the ceremonial kiss. Ah, well. Barbara subtly bent her neck as they'd practiced, and Will lifted the veil. He placed a small peck on Barbara's friendly red lips, and the onlookers sighed with pleasure, and perhaps a touch of relief.

Will looked around and almost wanted to pinch himself. Everything had gone according to plan. He didn't like surprises, and here at the Rotary Club, where his father had been a member for two years, a man could find respite from the general air of "anything goes" that had permeated the country, insinuated itself even here, in comparatively staid Iowa City.

Thankfully, Barbara had never fallen prey to the wild shenanigans of the U.S. female population during the so-called Roaring Twenties. She'd kept her hair and her hemline long, and her priorities straight. Even the dress she wore today reflected her commitment to tradition: it had been her grandmother's, and her mother's after that.

As they, he and Mrs. Brown (oh, how he liked the sound of it), hurried up the aisle collecting congratulations, the future, like the wedding, looked firmly in his control. Yes, everything was going according to plan: he had his law degree, an exciting new job, and now, a wife. Will had worked hard all his life, his father had taught him the virtue of hard work, and now everything was paying off.

"Mom, Pop," Will greeted his parents with a kiss and a handshake, respectively, as they joined the reception line. It seemed that everyone in Iowa City was there to greet them, owing mostly to the high regard in which his father was held. Nicholas Brown's popularity, Will reluctantly suspected, was the result not only of his warm heart and big smile, but what Will considered the overly generous allowances he extended to so many customers who walked into the store. With the stock market in perpetual flux these days — hitting the roof one day, plummeting the next — a lot of the people they'd known all their lives, many of them farmers, were hanging on to their finances by a thread, watching their savings steadily erode under the weight of surpluses. But spend, spend, spend, the government kept shouting, keep everyone in business, keep the farmers producing. So what if the money isn't there with which to buy? It will be, soon. The message to business owners, even the owners of small Midwestern dry goods stores, was clear: accept the good intentions of your neighbors, extend them credit, and before we know it, everything will be right again. Well, how could Will argue? Even Herbert Hoover, the solid Iowa native recently installed in the White House, had promised a return to prosperity. The "triumph over poverty" is at hand, he'd said. This was the promise of the United States of America, after all, and Will, a proud Republican, well, he couldn't argue with that.

Sure, he knew the facts, he saw the coffers shrinking every day as his mother tried desperately to balance the books, but if there were two forces of nature he had to acknowledge as stronger than himself, they were the country that he loved, and the father he idolized. If Hoover said give 'em credit, and his father, large of stature and stout of heart, went along, and if the key to American prosperity was just for everyone to go shopping, well, maybe that was the ticket. Will could only hope so.

But if his father's largesse and the national economic roller coaster defied Will's power to control circumstances, at least the job he'd secured for himself would put him right in the middle of a situation he could control. Ever since the military exemption he'd been granted during the World War — not, thank heaven, owing to his mortifying five foot five stature (he'd gratefully learned that a man need only be five feet tall to be called to active duty), but because of his father's heart attack in 1916, and the fact that, as sole offspring of Nicholas and Electra Brown, he'd been deemed to have "indispensable duties at home" — ever since he'd been relieved of having to serve in the military so that he could oversee the store while his father recuperated, Will had vowed to himself, and to Barbara, and to his parents, and to anyone who would listen, that he would find an alternative way to serve his country; indeed, he would dedicate his life to upholding America's freedoms. The Red Scare of his early years in college provided just the issue to which his patriotic fervor could adhere.

It was right after the war that labor unions started to run rampant over the tenets of free enterprise. Informed by the revolution in Russia and fueled, it was widely believed, by Bolsheviks, workers were demanding ever-higher wages and ever-shorter hours, and this anarchy must be stopped. Clearly, the tides of incoming aliens were at the root of this antiprofit, anti-American surge, and Will Brown, along with thousands of other God-fearing patriots, pledged to stem the tide. Thus, he'd decided to go to law school and, once enrolled, concentrated on immigration law, with an eye toward tightening restrictions on entering the country, or before anyone knew what had happened, the nation would be taken over by Communists and anarchists, Jews and other "freethinking" types.

That the country had been settled by immigrants, that his own parents had been the children of immigrants, did not disturb Will's convictions for even one moment. Quite the opposite, for when his grandparents had changed their name from Dambasis to the all-American "Brown," and turned their backs on Greek Orthodoxy to join the Protestant faith, they'd steered the very course of his philosophy: if people didn't want to fit into this country and its ways, well then, no one had asked them to come.

To Will's vast satisfaction, he'd secured an important position at Ellis Island, the belly of the beast. The Island of Hope, some called it; others referred to it as The Island of Tears. Will had worked there as a legal inspector during a summer off from law school back in the early twenties. Back then, the island was overrun with immigrants, and it was all the government could do to keep it staffed. Law students eager to serve were a good fit for the long hours, middling pay, and demanding work expected of interrogators.

Hour after hour, sometimes seven days a week, Will would sit atop his wooden stool at a high wooden desk in the Great Hall, looking out onto the many long, penned-in rows into which the hopeful newcomers had been corralled. As a legal inspector, he knew he was the final obstacle these people had to face before being admitted into the country. They'd gotten through the preliminary questioning and medical inspections, and now his interrogation was the end of the line — exactly where his desk stood.

One by one he'd call up the eager arrivals, sometimes as many as 500 a day. Most of them wore clothing meant to make a favorable impression, but the carefully draped shawls and proudly perched caps struck Will, more often than not, as costumes from another time.

"Name?" "Point of origin?" "Birth date?" "Married?" "Race?" "Destination?" "Do you have a job waiting for you?" Will asked the questions countless times each day, the tedium offset by the importance of doing the job honestly, conscientiously. This was a rigorous process, as well it should be, gaining entry into the United States of America, not like hopping over some border fence, for goodness' sake.

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Excerpted from A Tale of Two Citizens by Elyce Wakerman. Copyright © 2015 Elyce Wakerman. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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