A LONG TIME FRIEND

Kristallnacht, 2023

Last night I talked to my 85-year-old friend, Ervin Staub, on the phone. He lives in Florida now. Ervin’s English still carries its indelible traces of Hungary from the time of his arrival in America as a young university student in the late sixties.

Ervin and I go back a ways now. In 1986, Nina and I and our kids happened to move into the same neighborhood as Ervin and his family in Amherst.  This happenstance was a great opportunity for my buddy Jack to pounce. If there was one thing that excited Jack it was “matchmaking.” And, with Ervin and me, Jack smelled something appetizing. The problem was, once Jack had found a match, he’d go on endlessly, bragging about all the successful relationships he’d arranged, male and female. How great these “shidachs” of his were, how mutually beneficial, etc. He never mentioned his failures, but being Jack’s close friend, I knew of a few. In any case, Jack began selling Ervin to me big time.

Jack, admittedly fond of being right about his hunches, did his homework on the two of us. Ervin and I were both Jewish immigrants from different countries, each with our own stories, yet bound by a connection of enormous tragedy. Ervin was a child Holocaust survivor from wartime Hungary, and I the son and grandson of survivors from nearby Austria. Having grown up in South Africa - a whole other story – I was accustomed to “popping over” to friends houses. Unannounced. That’s just what we did. When Jack informed me that Ervin lived very close by, a karmically propitious distance, I began popping over there unannounced. Like every afternoon when I walked by his house.  To this day, I’m not sure my gregariousness was always appreciated, but being a European gentleman, Ervin could hardly kick me out. So began our relationship.

Eventually, after several years, Ervin confessed that my unorthodox persistence had won him over. He liked having his schedule interrupted by something pleasantly distracting, like me. In any case, it seems there was some chemistry, something like brothers from different mothers. I guess you could call it connection.  We’re still friends nearly forty years later.