Failure of a Motherless Son

...When Menachem spoke to his father about the physical resemblance and its delicate connection to his childhood fantasies about his mother, he saw his father's eyes turn moist "Maybe," Morns said, "that's a good reason for the three of us not living together " The words were spoken softly, but firmly Menachem could tell he must not argue the point, even though his father's logic seemed senseless If three people suffered from not having a family, why not live together' What was wrong with pretending they were a family' But Menachem did not press the point with his father Morns was resolute His business relationships were to be kept separate from his family relationships, and Fanny was to be kept separate from Menachem...

...The Haymans need me like a hole in both their heads Their father said to give the bum a job, so they gave me a job Their father saves them money by living in the old neighborhood, so they have a little money kicking around and they give it to me That's what you call success, making it on your own But Menachem, you know what I've learned, I've learned you don't question anybody, especially when they want to give you something You don't say, 'I don't need a handout, it makes me feel small, like a little boy, taking all this generosity from people who once were almost like enemies ' You say, 'Thank you very much, I'll take whatever it is you want to give me A job...

...Under the circumstances, it was natural that Menachem grew up believing in the possibility that his mother was alive As a child, he had dreamed of spending his life hunting her down the same way that intelligence operators spend their lives tracking down war criminals But there was a problem, he would think, lying in bed What if he discovered that his mother was alive and remarried, with children...

...You don't go back," Yankel would respond, "but that doesn't mean you can't go forward Nothing means forgetting the past, as if that were possible '. Morris would look at him and say, "Who the hell are we trying to kid1 Our lives were spoiled The greatest contribution is to make sure the next generation suffers as little as possible Which means Menachem ". Yankel never pursued the issue He knew that eventually Morns would drag out the old argument "It's easy for you Yankel, you have nobody All right when he's a man with his own family, but now he's a boy ". Yet Morris kanter s happiness did indeed come from a woman, Fanny Boehm When his wife died, he made a pledge he would never marry again Every woman reminded him of Anna, every scene with a woman, every image he saw or imagined brought the memories back to him There would never again be a woman, not even for Menachem's sake, as so many people gently advised him "Of course he needs a mother,' Morns would reply bitterly "He needs his mother " Nevertheless, Fanny Boehm became a close friend It all started innocently enough Morns required someone to look after the house when he still owned the stationery business Yankel gave him the names of several women in the neighborhood who did occasional light work, including Fanny's, and she was the least expensive...

...Nor does he recall the nights as a small child when he was unable to sleep, and his father and other people who lived in his house tried to comfort him He would tell them he w as having bad dreams and was afraid to sleep because he knew the dreams would return They let him play and sleep wherever he wished, but the nightly terrors persisted Then, suddenly, when he was seven, the dreams stopped Menachem has heard of this behavior, yet it always seems to refer to another person...

...Nothing can be more tragic," Rose told her daughter, "than tor a child to be separated from his mother, especially when he is very small But when the separation has occurred because the mother's been killed in a concentration camp, then there can be no certainty about anything in that child's mind Why should he believe anything anybody tells him about himself, or that the person who says he's his father really is...

...Moved and perplexed by Menachem's unusual response to the assignment, Linda could not convince him to tell the teacher of his difficulty Nor could she understand Menachem's inability even to imagine a family tree Several years later, when both had completed high school and it appeared they would one day be married, he told her of his obsession with the notion that Morris was not his real father...

...He could be anybody in the world," Menachem answered flatly "Ask your mother about it ". That very night, Linda did ask her mother For while the Kanters' economic status would not be a deterrent to marriage, her own family hardly being well of f, there surely would be a problem if Menachem was mentally disturbed...

...Sadly for Menachem, what his father called "just an important friendship" did not result in Morns and Fanny spending more time with him Fanny never even joined them for dinner The only noticeable change was that she ceased working for them...

...What would have been an unthinkable idea earlier in his life, Fanny's presence turned into an obsession But who could he speak to about this...

...Wonderful When do I start'' You don't even ask, 'How much do I make?' Because one lousy question and they call you ungrateful, and before you know it, they take the offer away...

...A CASE HISTORY Failure of a Motherless Son BY THOMAS J COTTLE Thomas J Cottle, distinguished visiting professor at Amherst College and lecturer on psychology at Harvard Medical School, is conducting a series of studies on poor ethnic families...

...Listening to his wile recount her mother's words, Menachem nods in agreement "That's right,' he says, "we just don t know...

...Of course he's your father," Linda insisted "Who else could he be...

...No one understood this fascination, and both his father and his Uncle Yankel worried that perhaps Menachem seemed excessively interested in manual labor Manachem remembers their concern He wouldn't have dared admit to wanting to become a plumber or carpenter "So, what do you want to become'" Yankel would ask him "I'm thinking," he would reply, "I'm thinking " He gave that same answer when he was 10, on the night of his Bar Mitzvah, and again when he was 16...

...If one word describes Menachem Kanter's childhood, the word is cold There were, of course, many nights in the small apartment when he could not get warm even under four blankets His left foot was always colder than the right His nose ran and he breathed with difficulty Coldness, however, also reflected his loneliness, the hours he spent alone making model planes, listening to the radio, watching the women work in the kitchen or clean around the house He could watch people work for hours Plumbers, painters, scrub women-he was fascinated by their movements When noise outside announced the arrival of workmen, Menachem would dash out and stand in the cold shivering, enchanted by the activity...

...But.vow, Menachem, you won't be in this position You'll tell them, 'A nice offer, a very nice offer Tell me, what's the salary, what's the gimmicks''' And when you leave them, you won't tell them anything You'll say, 'Let me think it over' You'll keep them guessing so they know you have a brain for business, and you won't settle for the first thing that comes along Most important in business, you never let the other person know you are desperate They must always think your market is gigantic If they don't give you the job you want, you have a list of offers long as your arm You need them as much as you need your own eyes, but you have to make them think you can go somewhere else Once they know you're in their grip, the price comes down and their respect for you goes with it When the price and the respect come down, you find yourself in the position I'm in with Aaron Hay-man and his sons They're not dumb, these people Oh no, they are very intelligent So you have to be more intelligent than they are, all the time ". Menachem had heard similar messages all his life No matter what the words were, Morris' message to his son was always the same Don't end up like me, the world's Number One failure Menachem wished he could say that such talk scared him, made him feel he was destined to become a failure like his father Something else about his father's obsession with failure disturbed him, too Why did the job with the Hayman brothers bring forth such self-deprecation when Morns' health began to improve the instant he started working...

...Occasionally, Menachem would spend time with his father on Sundays, but mainly Morns needed to rest When he found the energy, he preferred to pursue his great passion, checkers Menachem's most prominent childhood memory is of going with his father to the tea house on Bancroft Street and watching him play checkers For the first hour or so Menachem was intrigued by the game, then he became bored and irritable He played with the children of the other men, but they didn't become his friends...

...Menachem remembers his father working every day It was eight o'clock at night, usually, by the time his father arrived home, weak and exhausted Morris Kanter was never a well man The doctors worried about his periodic fainting spells and his constant fatigue, yet could determine no illness Friday nights, when Morns wasn't tired, father and son went to schul During the kaddish (the mourner's prayer) Morris looked weepy Menachem fought off feelings of sadness and boredom Going to school made him want to speak to his father, even though he could not get clear in his own mind what he would say if ever they found the proper moment for conversation...

...For a while after selling out, Morris did work in a stationery shop owned by Erwin and Jack Hayman, brothers he once felt to be his strongest competitors They had opened a small retail store shop about the same time he opened his, and soon expanded into the wholesale end of the business as well The Haymans were delighted to have him working for them, Morris, in turn, was content to work for the Hay-mans, even though he felt like a charity case He told Menachem...

...What he needed, most agreed, was a woman She didn't even have to be a wife, or a mother for Menachem But a man needs a woman to tell his troubles to, a friend Yankel told him this a hundred times "You found all that out in your books...

...But how can Menachem know for sure about any of this7 All the records were destroyed when he came to this country Or maybe they weren't Maybe there are records somewhere in Germany that could prove to him that his father is really his father But many of these people don't even want to know about those things They all think about it, but a lot of them wouldn't dare go back And people like us and Mr Kanter, do we have the money lying around to take a trip to Germany to go looking for records that maybe aren't even there...

...Morns Kanter ran a small stationery store He had been fortunate to raise a little money to start his business downtown, where the demand for his goods would be highest One year after the store opened, two office buildings went into construction and Morns rejoiced at the thought of the increased business But his expectations did not materialize Business improved with the erection of the buildings, but taxes and rent also went up, as did the price of paper goods...

...Yet if the revelation of Morns' special friendship with Fanny made only insignificant changes in the Kanter's public life style, it aroused something very deep in Menachem From his early childhood, he had never been wholly convinced that his mother was dead He recognized his wish to deny the reality, still, he had never seen concrete evidence of her death The Nazis had taken her prisoner, and when no one heard from her again, she was presumed dead Thousands of families had experienced the same thing In times of war, disappearance implied death But Menachem wished he could visit her grave His father told him once that they could make their own pretend grave, they could treat it as a monument to Menachem's mother Menachem hated the idea and thought it preposterous Morris insisted that many people did just this, and that it could be as holy a resting place as a real grave The Rabbi would confirm his story, he entreated his son Menachem was unmoved Either they found his mother, or her real grave, or they did nothing...

...Once, in school, Menachem's teacher asked the students to trace back their family history by interviewing their relatives Students without living relatives were allowed to construct an imaginary family tree At first, Menachem was terrified by the assignment He told his friends the assignment was foolish and wasteful, but they disagreed with him Only Linda Orlovsky, a classmate with whom Menachem had become quite friendly, listened to him sympathetically She knew little of Menachem's background like his father, he was not one to speak about it "My lather has a stationery business downtown," he told her "My mother died in the War ". Linda Orlovsky could see that the family tree project had upset Menachem She urged him either to tell the teacher he couldn't do it, or invent a family tree Nervous about having to raise the subject of his background with his teacher, Menachem chose to contrive a family history He listed his grandparents as born in Germany He showed his mother dead, and the existence of three brothers and three sisters living somewhere in Europe Various uncles and aunts, whom he indicated as being enormously wealthy, were residing in Canada and South America, except for his Uncle Yankel, who he depicted as being married with three children Besides the invention of people, the chart made no internal sense whatsoever It was so bizarre, in fact, that on the evening before it was due in class Menachem tore it up, fell on his bed and wept...

...What if she had forgotten about him, or decided she would rather live with her new family' What if she disappeared during the War because she never really loved her husband and son' If Anna Kanter were alive, Menachem wondered, why had she not sought him out...

...When, exactly, the relationship between Morris and Fanny took on a more intimate tone, the two of them alone knew Menachem suspected nothing until his last years of high school His father occasionally came home late in the evenings or disappeared from the apartment on weekends, but the boy always assumed he was playing checkers or catching up on work Finally, Morns told his son of the secret friendship The boy was pleased, his father embarrassed Menachem wondered if his father planned to be married Morris said he and Fanny were just friends, two people with their private reasons for not wanting to be married And Uncle Yankel, he instructed, was not to know of the involvement...

...Menachem's reasoning went even further Any woman who befriended his father or his uncle, he imagined, could well be his mother Afraid to upset him by suddenly returning, she nonetheless wished to be close, if only to see how he was growing up Yankel had many women friends Fanny Boehm, of course, could have been her In fact, there was a resemblance between Fanny and Menachem Morns noticed it, but Fanny remarked on it first She said that was why she felt uneasy being around Menachem...

...Morris Kanter always had been a private person who, while openly complaining of his troubles, told no one of the underlying sadness in his life Friends saw him as a hard working, tired, burdened individual who had lived through a trying history If he didn't want to discuss his life, why should they pry...

...Certainly not Yankel, for it would threaten his uncle no less than his father Perhaps insane, the idea seemed just possible enough that Menachem cried when he thought of it too long...

...Rose Orlovsky's response to her daughter was forceful and direct Linda remembers her mother that one night as seeming more sturdy and thoughtful than ever before...

...Recalling that period recently, Menachem told a friend "He was in good sprints He complained about being the lowest paid salesman when none of the other salesmen knew halt as much about the business as he did, but he raced through breakfast just like he did when he owned his own store Failure, failure, failure That's all he talked about Yet it was like he was putting up this front Owning your own business is success, working for someone else in a low capacity is failure All right, everyone knows that But he wanted to make sure that I knew what real success and failure was all about And he didn't like the idea that he could be content in a position he himself called a sign of failure He never talked to anyone about it Maybe he thought no one would find out, so why tell them God, what a difficult and complicated man...

...Never one to like school, Menachem was a good student nonetheless He told himself he could become outstanding if he worked hard Someday, he promised himself, he would start working hard, but the someday never came Over and over again he was told that education provided the one chance for him to make something of his life Love of knowledge, the fun of playing with ideas or numbers, was never discussed-only that no one in this world would give him anything, that whatever was to be earned would have to be earned by him...

...Menachem Kanter is a middle-aged man consumed by the sense of himself as a consummate failure One sees this in his style and tone, his expression of anger, his abiding feeling of shame Slight, yet not frail, with a receding hairline and long thin fingers that make one believe he rarely works with his hands, he has a sadness about him that is always left uncovered In conversation he jumps quickly to the theme of personal failure and the feeling of shame it brings to Jewish people-although he would say, to Jewish men Surely he has great respect for women, and a deep regard and love for his wife, but he stresses again and again that men can fail in ways that women cannot When a man fails, it destroys generations of families, it damages the expectations of parents, ruins opportunities for children, and renders life miserable for everyone Women simply don't have this burden, Menachem says softly...

...There was a sadness and loneliness about Fanny that Menachem immediately detected Although firm with the boy, she was kind, keenly intelligent, maintained her dignity even when undertaking the most menial task, and at times revealed an unusually witty side She spoke German and Dutch, because her own path to survival after incarceration in death camps had taken her to Holland, where she worked as a washerwoman in the home of a doctor The doctor not only employed her, he looked after her health A victim of medical experimentation in one of the camps, Fanny was fortunate not to have died during the War or later in Amsterdam, where a hysterectomy was performed on her and a large section of bowel was removed Then in her early 20s, she too pledged never to marry, because she could no longer bear children The War, moreover, had taken her ambition Once a serious student of art and interested in becoming a doctor, she gave up her plans Since her family had been killed, it made little difference to her where she lived, the only thing that mattered was serving well the people who took good care of her...

...It would have been easy for her to learn precisely where her husband and son lived Maybe she had tried and was denied the information Yankel had told such stories in Menachem's presence Or perhaps Kanter was not the true family name Perhaps Morris and Yankel only took it to rid themselves of the War memories If Anna were alive, she would never be able to find her husband...

...For him, the strain of failure and the brooding unhappiness have been exacerbated by the death of his mother in a Nazi camp He barely remembers her, although her letters and photographs were brought to the United States by his father, Morns While he remembers fragments of the trip to America, particularly an argument at a Dutch custom's office over the authenticity of passports, many of his recollections are of stones he has heard, rather than the actual events Indeed, there is much uncertainty in his mind about the details of his escape from Germany when he was four years old-the homes where he and his father hid out, the people who fled with them He remembers a woman who wore black dresses and insisted he call her aunt She cared for him and a number of other children in a nursery that had a toy train and a stuffed giraffe he believed were his Because he was not allowed to take the toys with him, he concluded that the woman must have been mean, merely pretending to be kind...

...In "Impoverishing the Poor" (NL, February 26), Collie described the travails of Yankel Kanter, a member of one such family (Kanter is not their real name) In the following article, he recounts the story of Yankel's brother...

...Morris Kanter and his brother Yankel say the young Menachem was a lively, spirited boy who, after arriving in America, seemed to like Hebrew school and eating potato chips more than anything else in the world Menachem remembers nothing about the potato chips and says Hebrew School was boring, but at least the building was warm and the other boys were decent He remembers asking his father whether his mother had learned Hebrew Morris answered emphatically, Yes In the orthodox community Anna Kanter was raised in, girls did not attend Hebrew school, but her father made certain she and her two sisters learned to read and write the language So, Menachem asked, if my mother learned it and she was killed, why should I learn it7 He no longer remembers his father's reply...

...Morris would chide his brother "Freud, no doubt, has some theory about it...

...By the year of Menachem's Bar Mitzvah, Morris Kanter had become a sickly man who spent most of his time in bed He had sold his business and quickly expended his savings on medical bills, the little money he gave regularly to Yankel-an amount no one ever spoke about-and the expenses incurred by his son and the women employed around the house Although he received support from the state, there was never enough money By the time Menachem was 16, his father, still only in his early 50s, was gravely ill, he possessed neither the physical nor psychic energy to seek new employment...

...Bitter about this attitude, Menachem decided he was beyond the point of caring much whether or not his father remarried A boy needs a mother most when he is small, he told himself, and he had his mother for the first two years By the time a fellow is 15 or 16, he barely needs her Indeed, Menachem rationalized, he might have an advantage over some of his teenage friends who spend no tune with their fathers In any case, Menachem spoke to no one of his sadness To the outside world he appeared no different than the other children with whom he attended public school and Hebrew school Today he looks back and reflects on just how unhappy he had been "That's the pain of middle age," he says "You know how you feel, and how you must have felt all your life Worst of all, middle age means knowing how you're going to feel the rest of your life ". Morns Kanter's special friendship with Fanny Boehm evoked still another feeling in the young Menachem If no one knew whether his mother was alive or dead, and if he was only two when she disappeared and he was put into the care of various women, and if as a child he never spent much time with his father, then how did he know for certain that Morns Kanter was truly his father...

...Moms, and nephew, Menachem...

...If vow want to find out who your real parents are, you go to city hall and look at the birth certificate with our signatures on it I don't know, maybe they fingerprint babies nowadays Even if they don't, I saw you being born, we both saw you all the time There's no way in the world that you aren't our real daughter...

...Any one of us, no matter how we grew up, wherever we came from-and thank God your father and I didn't go through that experience-any of us can look at the world and say, I doubt everything Prove to me that everything I see and hear and smell and touch really exists You could go crazy thinking like that, yet you could go through life Maybe we'd say a person who thinks like that is a little nuts But when a boy like Menachem thinks that way, it's natural We expect him to think that way After all, how does he know what he knows' The Nazis hurt him very deeply They took his mother, they took away his ability to know anything tor sure, maybe for the rest of his life We just don't know...