The Image of His Father by Boris Sandler

Before this, we had never met or seen each other, but we immediately recognized each other. It happens that way sometimes when you go to another land to visit your ancestors’ graves.

Our eyes met. I responded to his gaze with a silent greeting, a slight nod of the head. My gaze at him elicited a question:

“From America?”

“No, from Israel,” I answered just as quietly and briefly. In a cemetery, it somehow doesn’t seem appropriate to speak loudly and at length.

“I’m from New York.”

He moved aside slightly and pointed with his eyes to the freed-up space next to him, the size of half a behind.

For me, that was enough. Such a bench!--two short poles dug into the earth with a board nailed across them. One could see something similar in our neighborhood next to almost every house—in the front, near the gate to the yard, so you could lean back against the fence. I hadn’t sat on such a bench in many years.

As soon as he felt the touch of my shoulder, the stranger announced:

“My father is buried here.”

I turned my head toward the headstone, ready to utter a word of comfort, but I immediately cut it short, as if I begrudged him. I could have sworn that from the black, well-polished piece of granite with sparkling specks the engraved face of my neighbor was looking back at me.

Just as quietly and calmly as before, he resolved my doubts:

“That’s me there.”

“What do you mean, you? On your father’s headstone?”

“Why, yes. What isn’t clear about that?”

Now he turned his head, as if to convince himself that only a fool like me couldn’t understand it. Satisfied, he added:

“A good piece of work. Three hundred dollars I gave him. It’s a very good likeness, no?”

Confused, I nodded agreement.

“But why…?”

“Why my picture?” he took the question right out of my mouth. “My mother always used to say that I was the image of my father. I don’t have a picture of him, so I gave the engraver my picture. When my father died, he was exactly the same age as I am now—sixty-nine.”

He motioned toward the grave, as if his father were standing there alive, listening to his son’s words.

“He was just as you see him, the last wagon-driver in Belz. His horse, Nikita, was part of our family; even more—he was our breadwinner. My father loved his horse more than his own two sons. You don’t believe me? Listen here. At the beginning of the 70s, when people were quietly moving to the West, my elder brother also got the urge to change his address. So he came one ordinary evening and said to my father: “This is just the right time to go!” “Go where? Why?” “To America, where all normal people are going.” As you see me, we all left—except my father. ‘Without Nikita, I’m not going! I’m no traitor!’ We, in other words, were traitors. My brother was beside himself. One word led to another, and a real civil war broke out, like the ones they had taught us about in school: sons against their father and the father against his sons. My poor mother, who was caught in the middle, got it from both sides. It got to the point that they had to get a divorce or else they wouldn’t have let her out with us. We parted as enemies, didn’t even say good-bye. My mother immediately began pining and ailing; she ate her heart out. Within a year and a half she was dead. She’s buried in Washington Cemetery, in Brooklyn, and my father is here, as you see.”

He grew silent. In a cemetery, on a beautiful summer day, the sky is especially deep blue and the sun stupefies everyone. The air is as neat and tidy as the truth, which one mustn’t besmirch here. Only the silence is restless; it awakens memory and conscience.

“Time is like a rampaging horse,” my father used to say. “You don’t know where it’s going or where it will stop.”

The man continued:

“About two months ago, we learned that my brother was deathly ill. Cancer, poor fellow. You know, I’m sure, that there they don’t hide anything from patients. So he said to me: ‘Little brother, I’m going to meet our father. How will I be able to look him in the eye when he’s been lying in his grave for thirty years now without a headstone?!’ So I came here, and within two weeks everything was taken care of. You can see that yourself. I don’t want to interfere with their meeting in Paradise.”

He had unburdened his heart and apparently felt close to me.

“Where do you live in Israel?”

“In Rehovoth.”

“And have you ever been to New York? No?” He suddenly rejoiced. “I’m inviting you to New York. You’ll find me there easily. Take the subway to Columbus Circle in Manhattan; I have a small business there—a horse and carriage. You just have to ask the coachmen where Nikita is—that’s the name of my horse, my beauty—and I’ll take you for a ride.”

I started to walk toward the gate. All along the narrow path, on both sides, the graves hunched over, many of them overgrown with weeds and wild flowers that were taller than the headstones. Here and there, behind the wild green thickets, we saw on the cold stones segments of congealed faces, which seemed to be playing with me from their eternity and their hiding-places.