Ghita Schwarz Read online

  He lay down, curled himself toward the wall of the room, then tucked his hand underneath his trousers, pushed his fingers into the hidden pocket, felt for the cotton bag he had sewn in the lining. He was alone. The wariness he felt at night had dissipated. He could let himself look.

  Still there, still there: the two tiny photographs, creased and dirty, the worn paper giving off a sour smell, images he had miraculously saved, hiding them when he had to in his fist, under his tongue. Fishl and all the others he had known would be jealous, pained with envy, if they knew what he kept with him at all times, in his used, free-man’s clothes, clothes with hidden pockets that could protect his images of the human world. The photographs, crumbling and dampened—he must have been a young child when they were taken—were to him like identity cards, identity papers, wordless evidence. He looked at his father’s narrow eyes, his mother’s solemn face. It was a serious thing to make a portrait. His father looked angry when he tried to be serious, but his mother, more calm perhaps, had a softness. Whatever fierceness she had inside her she disguised from the local photographer. More gentle than his father. He could not remember so much as a shout from her. His father, that was a different story. And yet they had made a family.

  Yes, he knew who he was. He had not betrayed himself. He may have been desperate for food, he may have been filthy, but he had tried to wash when he found water. He may have stolen, but almost never from someone weaker than himself. He had not hurt or beat, even in the one barracks where he had been in charge of the others, even when beaten himself by a fellow Jew for not beating the others—a fellow Jew!—that man whose memory he would never block out, he was the enemy, he was worse than the enemy! Suddenly a wave of anguish rose up in his throat, and he coughed to muffle it, to prevent it from becoming a cry. He would not, he had not, become what they wanted them to become, animals desperate to live, no, something uglier than animals, for animals did not kill except for food. He had not fallen in war, and he would not fall now. He still had his photographs, and now he had money. It was peace.

  He heard a footstep, the old woman padding about. He stood and leaned against the windowpane, his eye on the doorway. The room was clean, but the paint looked years old, and there was a smudge on the doorframe, a few centimeters below the top of the door. His heart started beating fast, for no reason, and he shook his head to calm down. It slowed to normal, and he sat down, no thoughts in his head.

  From the mattress he could see outside. The bedroom window looked out upon the garden blooming with white summer flowers: lily, gardenia, sweet pea. The old woman came out to the garden in the afternoon to tend it. He watched her. It was a modest house but large for one woman. There were men’s clothes in the wardrobe of his room, but not too many. A widow, he imagined. Perhaps with grown children. He watched her bend in the dirt, go into the house with flushed cheeks, breathing hard.

  He turned again at the doorframe. That smudge. Then he got up to look closely, his heart steady now. No, it was not dirt but a little set of holes at a diagonal, as if—but there was no other explanation. A mezuzah had been ripped out. This had been a Jewish house.

  When he came down to the kitchen an hour later the old woman was gone, a cup of tea prepared for him, no longer hot.

  FISHL RETURNED IN THE evening, face gray. I’m going, he said.

  What!

  It’s something—it’s something terrible there. Nowhere even to—they’ve burned down the barracks to kill the rats.

  They’ll come back, he muttered.

  Yes, said Fishl. Here at least it is clean.

  What did you eat? he said.

  Soup, a thick soup. And I have flour and sugar. I gave her the flour. She should not know what we have.

  The reichsmarks we can give her.

  Maybe.

  They were both silent for a moment.

  There was an office to give a list of names, Fishl said. To give and to see. But there were none for me.

  He could find no answer to Fishl and stayed silent.

  Fishl continued. In Zdanow perhaps I will find.

  First we could go to the American zone. We have money. We have stones. We can go anywhere. There they will have more lists.

  I am losing time, said Fishl. Some might have returned already. And perhaps my father’s property still stands.

  He looked at Fishl. Here we are together. Yours will come here, looking.

  Fishl shook his head. They could go anywhere.

  They had money. Money made one free and not a prisoner. With money, one purchased food and ate it slowly. With money, one moved about the country, not trapped in a transit center as if one still were a slave, awaiting death. He had saved Fishl’s life more than once, and Fishl had saved his too. Now money could pay to save a life in danger. They had money and stones. With money and stones, Fishl was willing to leave him, travel alone, despite knowing little remained at home. With money, Fishl was willing to go, and he was willing to stay.

  WHEN THE FEVER PASSED the next day he washed his American army undershirt and hung it from the window. It looked alone there, white and thin. The blue shirt he had from the camp storehouse was not too dirty. He thought of taking some of the widow’s husband’s clothes—what, should he buy from her?—but he did not.

  After washing he dressed, his blue shirt against his skin, wandered out into the warm air, venturing to the end of the road, near a house with three walls. He stood apart from the house, clutching his rucksack in his hand, watching the road. There were orders that any driver should pick up a refugee and take him as far as he was driving. A farmer stopped to load him onto the back of his truck, where three men pushed aside the empty potato sacks. The men came from a region of Romania that bordered with Poland, and within the first moments on the truckbed, exchanging information in Yiddish, they knew they would not find a name in common. He took in the smell of the raw potato skin, mixed with the odor of dirty burlap and the men’s unwashed bodies. But it was only a few kilometers to the refugee camp, and the cool air that bit into his skin wafted the smell away. He could see them looking at him with curiosity, envy, his voice steadier than theirs, his clothes mended. He thought to open his rucksack and offer them a tin of something, then thought better of it. They were on their way to fuller rations at the camp. He would let them go ahead of him in the lines.

  Half a kilometer from the entrance of the camp the driver stopped to let them down. He tried to walk a bit behind the trio, but they were so slow that at last he moved ahead of them, his eyes fixed on the wire fence surrounding the camp. He turned his head once to see them growing smaller behind him, the tall one leaning on the other two, bodies linked together, each gray costume blurring into another.

  A WOMAN WAS MAKING a commotion at the registry for ration cards. The British soldier at the metal desk was shouting, every word enunciated in terrible German, incomprehensible. The woman was speaking in three languages at once, a stuttering German scrambled with Yiddish phrases and Polish words.

  He stepped to the side of the line and called out. Let me translate for you, he said in Yiddish. They can’t understand you.

  No, she called back, they can’t.

  I can help, he offered in German. The British soldier motioned toward him. He pushed himself forward to the front.

  She’s making trouble over a thief, said the soldier. Tell her the ration card is for her, not for him. Only one for each refugee!

  Only one—he began—

  But the woman had understood. What, you want to help them in this? What will you get from them? My brother’s ration card, no doubt. Have you no shame, stealing from your own?

  All right, he said. She was a sharp one. He wanted only to help, perhaps find himself in a position to help the soldiers. All right.

  She saw his offended look. Her face softened. It’s the boy, she said. They have falsely accused that he—

  The British soldier interrupted. Enough, he said in German. One for each of you, now go. He was already stamping t
he green cards, not even asking for identity papers. It has nothing to do with us! The soldier glared at the woman. Your brother should have known better than to steal like a little animal.

  They moved away from the metal desk and into the barracks corridor. But now, out of the hearing of the soldier, the woman turned her speech to him, the words tumbling out, pressured, in Polish. He’s only a boy, she said. Only a child, who had not learned to recognize any law, but a clever one, a good one, they had found each other in a marketplace in their home province, how would he know that the mere act of trading cigarettes, it was not even stealing, only trading, and then of course his false passport, that was what called them to drag the child off like a dog, like a criminal—

  All right, he said in Yiddish. You don’t have to explain it to me like I’m a soldier. I know what a hungry child might do.

  But she could not stop. The soldiers had taken all the passengers off the wagon. It was like the beginning, all over again! Her brother had fallen in with the smugglers’ brigade, smugglers of food, gold, cigarettes, smugglers of refugees into the western zones, those Jews desperate to go anywhere near a port, a port that would lead them to Palestine or America. She herself, she wanted only to be near the others. What port she was in while she waited, that did not matter, only to be away from the Poles and—

  How lucky you are, to have found a brother, he interrupted.

  I, she said, her voice suddenly scratching. I—please.

  Don’t be scared, he said, the words coming out of him suddenly in Yiddish. Don’t be scared, he repeated. I won’t.

  It’s that he isn’t. Her face was flat, but her voice was animated, defiant. I don’t know him. He’s just a young boy who helped me. I said it for them to listen. My brother—I have heard nothing from my brothers, my real brothers—but he—he helped me.

  Her blank face and sharp voice pulled at him. He said, The problem is—among the British—it’s difficult to bribe. If it were Russians, we could pay—

  She looked at him.

  I have money, he said.

  She shifted her weight. How do you have money?

  Now that she spoke softly, he could hear from her voice that she was at least twenty, a woman. I have money, he repeated.

  They stood in silence a moment. Then she spoke. But what—she began—then paused—what is your name?

  The question startled him. It was an intimate thing to be asked one’s name. Already he was used to writing his name again in solid lettering, but to say it aloud still made him cautious. One did not say one’s name—those who knew it used it, those who didn’t received a false answer—even on the truckbed with the refugees he had used a borrowed name. He had been name after name, Mendl Abramsky, Abrasha Pavlovich, names that mimicked his own should he be surprised by someone he knew, names that belonged to the missing. He had a friend, a dear friend from the war, who knew him only as Miloch, the name of a dead man he had never met. Miloch: whose root was king. He had liked that name, had pulled it around his mouth before saying it, in a way he never had with his own name, the name he had used in childhood, the name his grandfather called him, the name his teachers uttered in praise.

  The young woman was waiting for his response. And he should give it. There in the moldy corner of the registry barracks, he had nothing to hide.

  I, he replied in Yiddish, I am Pavel Mandl. Pavel. Abram. Mandl.

  And then, the next question, as if they were meeting at an outing for young people: And what is your name, miss?

  Her name was Fela Berlinka. And the boy, she tried to add, Chaim—

  Don’t cry, Fela, said Pavel, although there was not a tear on her face. Don’t cry. We will find your little friend and we will take him out.

  They walked out into the courtyard and leaned on the side of the building, their backs against the splintering wood of the barracks. A group of three women, one covered in nothing but a blanket, moved slowly toward the corner where Pavel and Fela stood, then hurried past the open door.

  Let us think, Pavel said, facing the road, his eyes on the backs of the British soldiers who guarded the wire fence. It was nice to speak to a young girl, even if her belly swelled from her bones like an empty pocket, even if her dust-blond hair parted to reveal spots of scalp. He could see, not from her skin, not from her body, but from her manner, that she must be pretty, used to attention from men. That was why she pushed him off a little. Aloof. A woman with dignity.

  He rolled his shoulder to shake off his rucksack. He carried with him the valuables, hidden by several tins of meat and a quarter-loaf of bread. She was hungry. But when he pushed his hand into his rucksack, he did not take out the bread: instead he withdrew a slim scarf. Look what I have, he said. Red, with white. If we have blue we have the Americans.

  She paused. Also the British.

  I prefer the Americans.

  To me they’re all the same. But she fingered the scarf in his hands, then took it from him and tied it at her neck.

  I have an idea, Pavel said.

  THE BRITISH KEPT CHAIM among a group of boys in a locked barracks a kilometer away from the main camp. A handsome child, light-haired, with a surprised look on his face as a soldier brought him out into the sunlight. Fela whispered to him while Pavel stood from afar, watching them. He could see how they might pass for brother and sister, and their resemblance gave Pavel a feeling of relief and confidence. The lie he had persuaded Fela to tell—that the widow with whom he boarded lived in the house of Fela’s own relatives, that it was only right that they take back what had been taken from them—the lie seemed closer to true.

  A night passed, another day, but for a watch and only one of the gold chains a man sold Pavel a bicycle and agreed that the house in Celle, only ten kilometers from the camp, had belonged to Jews, and yes, Fela looked terribly familiar, just like the family who had lived there before the war. By the time Chaim had memorized the look of the long tile kitchen, the bathroom with hot-water plumbing, Pavel too was almost convinced that the widow’s house was the home where Chaim and Fela had spent holidays as very young children, children visiting their cousins who still lived in Germany, family who had not fled to Poland in the years before the war.

  THE WIDOW WAS IN the front yard, tending the garden. Two British soldiers, accompanied for translation by a German Jew from the refugee camp, swung open the garden gate.

  What is this? Pavel heard the widow say. This is not a boardinghouse.

  He waited a few meters away, with Fela and Chaim beside him. The soldiers spoke in low voices, but Pavel could make out a few words in English.

  “House,” murmured the younger one. “You must—”

  “Jews,” the other soldier said firmly.

  The German Jew was more talkative. You see, he said to the widow, nodding at the same time to the soldiers. They have proof. It is all down on paper, authenticated. He flashed the sworn testimony of the man Pavel had bribed.

  They are lying! cried the widow in German. That man, he boarded here in my house! Those two, who knows who they are!

  The German Jew smiled at the British soldiers, shrugged his shoulders. After a brief conference in English he turned to the road, where the three still stood.

  Stay here, he said. Wait.

  The soldiers and their translator disappeared into the house with the widow. Pavel and Fela and Chaim waited, it seemed for almost an hour, finally entering the gate to cross the garden and sit on the stoop at the threshold. When the translator pushed at the door again, it was to hold it open for the widow, who held a suitcase, and for the younger soldier, who carried a trunk. Pavel did not dare look at Fela and Chaim, who sat next to him, their breathing almost synchronized. Chaim kept his face blank, innocent. Perhaps it was wrong to show a young boy how to take a home. But what should they do instead—scavenge for a roof, fight for space with the rats in the camp? No. This was not stealing. This was living.

  He watched the old woman’s face as she walked past him—he could accept whateve
r empty curse she put on him, just as she had accepted the curses of the family that had been expelled for her. But she kept her eyes straight ahead, refusing to look at him. Her skin sagged a little from her chin, and he thought to grab another tin from his rucksack to give it to her, a pale trade for the house. But he did not move.

  The older soldier, who appeared to have more authority, approached Pavel with something in his fist: the widow’s key. Then the soldiers loaded themselves into their jeep and started the motor.

  The three of them stood in the garden, Pavel grasping the seat of his new bicycle, watching the soldiers’ jeep putter down the street and turn out of sight.

  So, said Pavel.

  He looked at Chaim and Fela, who did not respond. They seemed to wait for him to do something.

  We will live as one family, Pavel announced. Then, with his new key, he opened the door.

  Provisions

  May–September 1945

  COFFEE HE KNEW HOW to say in every language. Cigarettes too. Bread. Shoes. German was almost as natural to him as his native Yiddish and Polish, but now, only a short time after the liberation, he could speak in complex measurements to the Czechs and Romanians and Hungarians with whom he traded. A meter of nylon. Two kilos of potatoes. Three dozen shirts without buttons, four cartons of eggs, words for large quantities that had not occurred to him to learn in camp. As Pavel grew stronger, as he learned again to taste a spoonful of soup before swallowing, words and sentences began to form in his mouth and expel themselves without so much struggle.