The Changings

by Sarah J. Singer

We came. We came like the winds, like the rush of the waves. An aliyah in the wrong direction, to someone else’s promised land. We came with moth-gnawed clothing and whatever valuables we owned: Mamma’s broach and menorah, the mezuzah that hung on the door of Papa’s shop. We came shivering and sweating and stinking, and they did not trust our pallid skin, our mottled rashes, our heads crawling with lice.

But we had made it – crossed our sea of reeds while the waters crashed over our oppressors – and there was a land of milk and honey before us, a land of golden streets and amber grains.

“Spelling,” my mother insists, words caught in her throat and flowing out through her hands. “No Fryburg. Freidburg!” German is behind her lips, clawing to be free as a strange language tumbles from her tongue.

My father smiles a warm smile. “Is good,” he assures the man who is handling our papers. “Good name.”

We walk away, into our new Zion. The earth beneath my feet holds no glint of precious metal. My mother is weeping. Papa reassures her in halting, broken English. I do not understand his words, but I know their meaning: we must leave Germany, German, and the name that holds us to both behind.

This is the first Changing, and it plays over and over in my mind. It plays as English words tangle on my tongue and tears of frustration sting my eyes. It plays as my mother’s hands grow cramped around needle and thread, squinting in the low light to mend others’ clothing in a desperate attempt to buy back the precious heirlooms we were forced to sell only for a leaking roof and moldering mattresses.

My father is gleeful. The buildings are so large, the city so busy! We are safe, are making money, are together, are alive. And there is a magical court where a man can Change himself, invent himself anew. And four years after we arrive in New York City, when we have Mamma’s broach back but not the menorah (we never parted with Papa’s mezuzah), when I am twelve and English no longer sticks in my throat, my father goes to that court and asks for new letters to make him a different man. The second Changing. Suddenly, I am Saul Fryman and Mamma does not speak to Papa for a week.

In the afternoons, when I return from school, Mamma sends me out for fruits and vegetables from the vendors of our tenement. We cannot afford much. Still, I love the streets of the Lower East Side. I love the vivid colors of advertisements and the laundry hanging from fire escapes, dripping onto awnings. I delight in kicking at abandoned bits of newspaper and sounding out the English words printed on shop signs and posters: “Hershel Stein, Watchmaker,” proclaims one, “2 Rooms to Let,” says another.

When I am feeling particularly adventurous, I chase after the motor cars that rumble down our street faster than I could ever run, hearing my heart pound in my ears and the tenement boys cheering me on in a myriad of languages.

I can no longer picture our old home.

What I do remember is the sound of breaking glass as windows screamed and shattered into the shops below our apartments. Being the “cousins” of two smiling old gentiles, visiting for Easter. (“What is Easter?” I asked Mamma once the marching men had left.) The pretty girl from down the street, the one who kissed me on the cheek one Rosh Hashanah – my favorite something sweet. The one who disappeared with her family just before we left home.

“When will they be back?” I asked, thinking of holidays and wishing I could miss school as well.

Papa was solemn for once, a shadow over his bright eyes. “I don’t know.”

I am fifteen and a pretty girl at shul asks my name. I must stop and think, for Papa has just told us of the third Changing. We are the Freemans now, but I do not feel so free.

Yet, when I utter the name, the pretty girl smiles and her dark eyes glow. She is Hannah, she tells me. Hannah Tishler. For the first time in seven years, I see gold in the streets of New York City.

Hannah’s parents do not like me. I am shifty, they say, when they think the closed kitchen door muffles their voices. They have a large home, have lived in this promised land for generations. Some father of some father came in 1813, they boast, was a rabbi in a new Jewish world. Even to them, I am an interloper, not to be trusted. Who can blame them? I do not even have a name.

We stay together, Hannah and I, for half a year or so. I hold her hand and we go to the park and I kiss her soft lips, sweet as apples and honey. But her parents are weary of this city, decide to start anew in Boston, and when Hannah and I say goodbye, she does not shed a tear. She shakes my hand and tells me she will write. I know she will not. She has accepted her fate, and I have accepted that Saul Freeman is a slave to many things – Hannah Tishler’s parents included.

I am eighteen years old and my name is now Freidman. The fourth Changing is a relief to me, the last straw for my mother. She sells the broach, the menorah. She takes Papa’s mezuzah in the night and suddenly she is just a memory. A memory like so many faces who left my hometown, never to return. Yes, I understand now the sorrow on my father’s face, the fear in my mother’s eyes. I understand the nights in attics and cellars and on storm-tossed seas. I understand the death that closed its hands upon empty air where moments before my body had been.

And I know why Papa is so desperate to become a new man time and again. He fears we are not safe. He fears they will come again in the night and that this time we will not escape. Perhaps he thinks that we can fool them with our Changings, but I am not so sure. Some dark part of me thinks that if they came for us again, they would know us straight away. They would sense our loss.

It has been two and a half years since I have seen Hannah Tishler, tasted her lips, smelled her midnight curls. Since my mother’s flight, I think of Hannah often. Strange how one departure can bring about the sting of another – like salt on an open wound. I have been a man in my people’s eyes for five years, but it is only now that I feel much more than a child. Half-formed regrets flood down upon me and no ark reveals itself as my salvation.

I did not fight for Hannah. It seemed so futile at the time. But fall will find me at university, and how will Hannah find me then? If she seeks me out at all, she will be looking for a boy who does not exist. I am Saul Freeman no longer. I am new man. How better to prove this than by winning Hannah’s love?

My friends tell me not to dwell. They tell me I am clever, good looking, a catch. Any girl would be lucky to have me. Why fixate on one who left long ago, who never wrote, who perhaps never cared? I do not heed them – Saul Freidman answers to no man. And so, when I have received my diploma, tossed my cap, and left my high school for the last time, I buy a rail ticket to Boston. I assure poor Papa I will return; I will not follow in Mamma’s footsteps. I tell him I will find my love and then come home, and he tells me my tale will be an epic, that he is proud of his boy.

On the train, my doubts begin to surface. I feel small, smaller than I have felt in years, and I fear people will see the scrawny, patched, flea-bitten boy who yet resides within me. I am Saul Freidman, I tell myself. I am Saul Freidman. I check my reflection in the window to ensure that this is true, and there I am. My father’s large nose and dark hair, my mother’s green eyes. My jaw is strong, broad shoulders fill out my suit. Yes. I am Saul Freidman. Hannah will be glad to see me.

And so I stare out the window, watch the land rush by like watercolours. I lose track of the time.

“This seat taken?”

I start, look up, wonder if I have fallen asleep, if I am dreaming.

The man before me smiles a closed-lip, crooked smile and his eyes – deep eyes, as deep as his voice – light up, and he could be the stuff of dreams.

“Well?”

He cannot be more than a few years my senior, but I cannot help admiring the air of maturity that drapes his shoulders like a talis.

“No.”

“Grand.” he sits. “What’s your name?”

“Saul Freidman.” I say it automatically, as though it is one word.

He extends a hand to me and I shake it, thinking how silly my whole journey would seem to a man like this, thinking his skin is very soft. My stomach drops strangely.

“Call me John,” he says earnestly, and suddenly, he looks familiar, though I know we have never met. “So, Saul Freidman –” I like the sound of my full name spoken in his strong, confident tones; the rich texture of his words “– where are you headed?”

“Boston.”

“What a coincidence. So am I.” He crosses his legs, watching me like he can read my thoughts. “Business or pleasure?”

“I’m going to win back a girl.” The words have come so quickly that they startle me; I feel my cheeks grow warm.

John chuckles, meeting my eyes unabashedly.

“Did she leave you?”

“She moved away.”

“Didn’t fight it.” It is not a question.

I do not know what he is suggesting. Am I the one who did not fight, or is Hannah? The answer, of course, is both.

“No.” I reply. My mother always teased that she wondered if I could truly speak English at all; I use it so sparingly.

John is silent for a moment, and then he nods thoughtfully.

“Saul,” he says, and I feel as though some important knowledge is about to be bestowed upon me, “do you want to get a drink?”

I don’t drink, have never seen the appeal. But he is watching me with those intense eyes and his smiling is knowing and I cannot refuse.

“Yes.”

The dinner car is abuzz with conversation and John and I draw a few gazes. I wonder briefly if he is famous, but quickly dismiss the idea. Film stars, I know, are in California; he is too young and far too casual to be a politician; and were he a writer, I would recognize him from dust jackets or news articles. It then occurs to me what an odd pair we make, this young man brimming with confidence, smiling at a lost-looking Jew in a cheap suit.

He buys me a scotch and toasts by saying, “Never trust a woman, Saul. You understand?”

Nodding, I take a small sip, and it burns my throat like charoset, like the bitter herbs of old.

We sit in silence for a moment, and then he says, his voice solemn, “It’s been my experience, Saul, that if a man loses love, it’s best for it to stay lost. This girl, you want to marry her?”

I hesitate, take another sip of burning liquid, and murmur, “I suppose.”

“Suppose? There’s no suppose in love! You’ve got to know!” He takes me by the shoulder, his gaze intense, and I cannot look away. “Do you know?”

And I cannot say yes, no matter how I long to, and my strange companion seems to read this in my eyes. His hand squeezes my shoulder gently.

“Well, you’ve got three more hours to decide,” he says.

Back at our seats, John pulls his hat down over his eyes and sleeps, his strong jaw relaxing, his long legs stretched as far as they can go in the cramped space between our row and the next. My shoulder tingles where he has touched me. I try to rid my skull of the reeling, the buzzing, that has overtaken it. Do I love Hannah? I did not love her two years ago as I watched her leave. I did not love her in the intervening time. I loved her when my mother left – or rather, I loved the memory of her. But is that enough? A memory cannot stand veiled beneath a chuppah and make marriage vows. My cheeks burn with shame. What could have possessed me to make this journey?

We arrive in Boston late at night, and I am eager to find cheap accommodations and sleep away the drink and my foolishness. John and I walk from the station side by side, and I imagine I can feel the tiny space between his shoulder and my own. We reach an intersection, make to go in opposite directions, chuckle, look back at each other.

John shakes my hand again, and the sensation in my shoulder travels to my palm.

“Nice meeting you, Saul. I wish you luck.”

“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it more than he can know.

He keeps my hand in his as I try to turn away. When he speaks, there is a softness in his voice, but also a hesitance, and I wonder if he is hiding something the way I hide the immigrant boy inside me.

“I live nearby. Look me up sometime, will you?”

“I don’t –”

He smiles and pulls out a scrap of paper. Without taking his eyes off of mine, he writes an address, folds the page and slips it into my breast pocket. He leaves before I can read it. I feel my face flush and watch him go until he disappears into the darkness. The lights of a motel call to me like a siren’s song. I sleep well that night.

In the morning I make my way to the address Hannah left me with two years ago. I straighten my tie, ring the bell, and wait. A maid opens the door and I manage a shy smile.

“Is Miss Tishler in?” I ask.

And so, I find myself waiting in a sitting room that speaks of both taste and wealth. A familiar footfall sounds behind me. I stand, turn, and Hannah’s lovely eyes are upon me.

Her hand flutters to her heart.

“I thought Beth had gone mad. Oh, Saul, it really is you!”

I clasp my hands behind my back and nod coolly.

“I thought I should drop by. I’m only in town for the day, but it wouldn’t be right for me to come all this way without paying a visit.”

She is puzzled.

“Paying a visit?”

“Yes. A visit.” I do wonder if I am being cruel, but I have to see her reaction, cannot resist this experiment. And we are so young. We will recover.

“I see,” she says stiffly. “Two years and you thought you would just stop by for a visit.” Her lips are tight, her shoulders tensed.

There is a long silence in which I wish for a scotch.

Finally, she draws in a breath that throws her collarbones into relief and causes a strain on her blouse, casting a spell that may have worked on Saul Freeman, but which has no affect on me.

“You know,” she says, her voice high, “I didn’t want to leave.”

“You hardly seemed to mind.”

“I hoped you would come after me!” She is shocked by her retort, stares wide-eyed, and then we are kissing, my hand upon her cheek, her neck, the slope of her waist. She tastes the same as I remember, yet something is missing. I recall our kisses differently – less passionate, but laced with more emotion. Our pieces still fit together seamlessly, but it is clear now that we are from two different puzzles. John’s smile flashes through my mind, my palm and shoulder hum.

I jerk away.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “This was…”

“A bad idea,” Hannah agrees.

“I should go,” I say, panicked, but she takes my hand before I can leave.

“Saul, I…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never wrote. And that I expected you to be something you couldn’t be.” Her eyes implore me to understand. “I was just a girl, dreaming of a prince. And when you didn’t chase after me…I suppose I thought it meant you didn’t care.”

“And now it’s been too long.”

“Yes.” Smiling, she adds, “But it was nice to see you.” She draws away, and as she lets go of my hand, her fingers sliding through mine as she moves away, I think her skin is almost as soft as John’s.

I leave Hannah’s house at a run, pulling a slip of paper from my breast pocket. The streets of Boston slip past me and the pounding of my heart echoes in my ears, and I think now I could race any motor car. I can feel scotch tickling the back of my throat though I have had no drink, and the sound of my shoes against the pavement becomes the low, rolling tones of John’s voice.

Panting, I reach the apartment, and freeze. Have I gone mad? Am I ill? What can I possibly expect to find here? My mind tells me I am a fool, but this time, I know not to listen. My stomach drops, and, hands shaking, I ring the bell. I wait. My heart is a Maccabean hammer against my ribcage.

The door swings open, and John’s face breaks into a grin that I somehow know is for me, and me alone.

“Saul Freidman. I’ll be damned!” There is something soft beneath his jovial tone.

“Actually,” I tell him, “it’s Freidburg.”

“Sorry?”

“My name. My name is Saul Freidburg.”

I am still breathing heavily, and I can feel a frightened intensity pulsing in my eyes as I meet his gaze. He looks at me softly, lifts a hand as if to brush away the lock of hair in my eyes, then lowers it again, looking out at the crowded street behind me.

“Well, Saul Freidburg, would you like to come in?” John grins my grin again and I wonder if his lips taste of scotch.

Smiling, my heart racing, my stomach twisting, I nod, and I feel I have become myself.