Ghita Schwarz Read online

  Berel decided they would visit Dvora after eating, so as not to look hungry when they arrived in the hospital. He wanted to appear before her with a look of energy and life.

  Sima, Berel said as they entered the infirmary building, can you stay here and wait for me?

  No, said Sima. I’ll come with you. How will you find her without me?

  I’ll find her, said Berel. It’s not so hard.

  I’ll come with you, she said.

  If it was me in the hospital, you’d let your mother go, said Berel. You would know she could find me.

  That’s different, said Sima.

  It’s not for children, said a woman at the table for visitors. A woman who spoke Yiddish. Believe me, there is no use in trying to convince me.

  You see? Berel said to Sima. There’s nothing I can do.

  He was given a mask to put over his mouth, and led by a nurse through a door and up a narrow staircase. He could see Dvora waiting for him on her cot, in a broad room surrounded by perhaps a dozen feverish women. Some of the cots were empty.

  She had been much sicker when she entered the camp. But in the daylight pushing in from the window, she looked different. Her skin was bruised and spotted from malnutrition. He had seen the marks, he had seen her discolored body, but he had not noticed as he did now, when she was surrounded by other women, pale women, perhaps sicker women, but none with the same scattering of bluish stains. He himself was drawn, thin, continually hungry, he knew, his skin pale, but Dvora—had she looked so weak only two days before?

  He sat by her bed, in a thin metal chair. She did not allow him to touch her.

  Where is Sima? she asked.

  Berel began. He smiled. School has started, he said. He felt his voice filling, projecting news of Sima like a radio giving out propaganda. Sima loves it. The games, the books. There’s even a little garden for them to play in—Berel’s image of it grew more lush—where they learn how to plant, and water, and dig. And listen, Dvora—he paused for a bit of drama—she’s not so behind after all. Maybe in arithmetic, but she reads just as well as the others.

  Through her fever Dvora beamed.

  There’s a music class! Berel exclaimed. I almost forgot.

  Look! she said, voice tingling with pride. Look! She stretched her arm underneath her cot. Her hand emerged with a long bar of chocolate, a piece of bread, a half stick of butter. Look, Berel. They give us so much here. Take it. Sima is so thin and small. She must catch up. She needs food for the mind, now, not just the body. Dvora laughed.

  She was giving it to him as well as to her daughter, Berel thought. She let him keep his pride.

  Dvora, he said, they give us enough—this is for—

  She made a face. I hear what they give you, she said. The women say. Porridge, and bread, and coffee that looks like dirty water.

  Berel shook his head.

  We get eggs here! They cook us eggs. So here. Until you have better.

  For a moment Berel thought he should not tell Dvora about his job; he didn’t have it yet, it was not yet sure, and perhaps it was bad luck to announce something he might have to recant later. But it was too tempting. While she fed him from her little prison, her little rest from the struggle of the world, he was getting on with life. He was learning to live: work, school, sleep. She was still expending her strength to survive. When he told her she looked relieved, glad at his competence, happy for him, happy that he was again becoming a man.

  He came downstairs to the same chair in which he had dropped his daughter. She was sleepy, but too heavy to carry, and he wanted her to walk outside with him, to see. Here was the land that Jews made. An ugly land, to be sure, ugly and deformed, filled with military props, watched over by British, but something they had made. Not the promised land, where, as he used to say to Sima, oranges were more plentiful than potatoes, and Sima’s eyes would widen in temptation, but still a land Jews had made. Work, school, orchestra, news, even a little government.

  He was not a pious man, but he wanted to go to a service, to sing a little. He still knew how to sing.

  Sima, he said. Your mother gave us a bit of chocolate.

  Should we save it? said Sima.

  I suppose. Berel sighed.

  THE BREAKFAST LINE TOOK longer than he had expected—some kind of argument several families ahead of them—and Berel and Sima found themselves trotting to the school building to make it in time.

  The schoolroom startled him. Only a day before, he had not believed that there could be a school for the refugees on German soil. But once he knew it existed, the dream of it expanded to something luxurious, something even he had not had as a child growing up in his town of one-room schoolhouses. He had thought: a garden, and a music room, and perhaps even an area for reading, where children could stay quietly. But instead he saw one room carved out of office space in a barracks, where perhaps forty bony-faced children of all ages sat in metal chairs, writing on tables spread between them, sharing books. One or two faces turned to look at them. They had entered the classroom a few minutes late, and the teacher, writing Hebrew letters on a blackboard, was calling out words for the children to repeat.

  An aide to a teacher, a young man, perhaps fourteen, came over to introduce himself.

  Chaim, he said.

  Sima said nothing.

  This is Sima, said Berel. Sima Makower. Now, Simale, go.

  Sima didn’t move. Berel crouched down. Go, Sima.

  Come, Sima, said Chaim. He held out his arms.

  Sima shrank into Berel’s chest.

  Please, said Berel. But he could feel her shaking, and through his shirt the first drippings of tears soaked through to his skin.

  Chaim said, When she’s ready. He moved to a table where another child was writing.

  Sima’s silent tears gave way to muffled sobs. No, Tatteh, no. Don’t leave me.

  He put on his stern face. Sima. Behave. School is for ladies, not babies.

  But she was sobbing fully now. Don’t leave me, don’t leave me.

  The young man trotted back to them. You must not cry, he said in Yiddish, a look of anxiety on his face. It upsets the children to hear crying. It scares them.

  Indeed, a child near them had her hand in her ear, and another glared at the back of Sima’s head. What was Berel to do? If he was late, even twenty minutes late, someone else would step in to take his job, and he would be directed away again, back to the central office for other work, manual work. The process would begin again, the search, the fatigue, the lines for soup that barely filled him, the cramped cots behind the family sheet. They would remain in the barracks, unable to afford or even make connections for a private dwelling, a washroom and toilet, a little table to read and play cards. This was how people gave up their future. This was how people became the stopped bodies in the barracks. To stay here until she stopped crying—it was impossible. Dvora would know how to tell her to stop. Dvora would know how to feel the harshness, express the desperation. Now, all of a sudden, he just knew how to act it.

  Sima, he said, whispering in her ear as he pulled her outside the classroom door. Think of your mother. How disappointed she would be.

  Sima bawled harder. Quarantine! she wept. My mama has quarantine!

  At one time it had shocked him, Sima’s ability to keep silent at moments of danger. One night five years ago they had crept across an icy river into Bialystok, along with dozens of other families, and the memory of the quiet, even the smallest child perfectly silent, still haunted him. What a knowledge for a two-year-old to have! He and Dvora had done their best to protect her, but now, in the face of Sima’s wails, he thought perhaps they had protected too much, keeping her locked inside their crumbling dwellings while they did their night work, blanketing her with their bodies as she slept, watching her every move if she wandered out to meet other exiles in the villages. She had been kept in a bright isolation, like a sickly child he had known as a boy.

  Just for a moment, I’ll wait, said Berel. But only
a moment. You must study.

  Sima looked at him, the tears streaming.

  All right? But only a moment!

  She quieted herself and moved into a small chair. Every few minutes she would look over at him to see that he remained. But by noontime he could see her attention was on the teacher, who drew letters on the board in Hebrew for the children to copy. Sima would be all right. Berel could leave without a fuss.

  But he did not. He watched Sima etching letters, slowly, much more slowly than the others, and he watched her imitate the older boy at the desk next to her as he rubbed an eraser across his page and blew the dust from the eraser away. He watched her tap her thumb against her finger as she listened to the other students sing a song in Yiddish, a song he himself did not know. All morning and all afternoon Berel sat in his rickety chair, not getting up to eat or to drink, watching his daughter, her first day of school.

  The Concert

  February–April 1946

  CHAIM LEARNED HEBREW JUST as Pavel would have wished him to: without struggle. He showed off his facility to Pavel every Sunday evening. The letters he already had from Yiddish, and the grammar was so simple, so clear, that it seemed to Chaim he had always almost spoken it, like a precise version of the speech babies made. He was preparing to read for the Sabbath service of his bar mitzvah, and he studied the whole portion, even beyond the verses he would sing, the story of Lot’s wife, the mother transformed to a pillar of salt from looking back at her city, her home, her neighbors on fire.

  He had heard the story in his childhood, but as an adult—already fourteen, he had lied to make himself younger to Pavel, bewildering himself even as the lie fell out of his mouth; he had no reason to lie now, and yet any truth, no matter how innocent, still seemed dangerous to reveal—as an adult he read parts he had not remembered from before, the panic of Lot to save himself, the family’s sins after the destruction, the unnamed wife, mourned not at all. If there was someone to be punished, it should be Lot, who offered his daughters in sacrifice to the savage townsmen. It was unjust that he was to be saved, along with the daughters he would not protect. Abraham had spoken out for Lot. Why could not Lot speak out for his wife?

  Because that’s the story, explained Pavel, fingers tapping the kitchen table. The story is she looked, and became salt.

  It is not right. Chaim looked at Pavel’s puzzled eyes.

  She disobeyed! said Pavel. God said not to look back!

  Chaim turned his gaze to his reading, the worn gray pages. The books the charities sent from America were in poor condition, the bindings unraveled, the paper thick, sometimes crumbling. Pavel, returned from his travel to the American zone without having found his sister, had brought back to Celle a satchel of books.

  It’s not for us to argue with the story! It is a portion, it is important, a lesson.

  I don’t understand the lesson.

  She wasn’t lucky, but also she disobeyed. She risked and she lost. But the important thing is that she looked and became salt. The others, the husband and the daughters, they obeyed and they escaped.

  Chaim rubbed his fingers on the sides of his face, feeling his skin. Smooth, mostly hairless, soft. There was a darkness inside him, a well of mud and dirt, but he kept himself clean with the milled white soap Pavel brought for Fela.

  Enough for today, Pan Pavel?

  Yes, said Pavel, suddenly absent. Yes, all right. And stop this Pan, Pan. I’m not old enough for Pan.

  You’re the elder of the house.

  I am thirty, said Pavel.

  PERHAPS SHE HAD TURNED and looked back with a purpose. Like a suicide. Chaim had known cases himself. In the ghetto, a man had jumped from a window in a nearby apartment. Such things were reported more than a few times. There had been talk of poisonings, here and there. People who could not bear to look into a future without the home they had always known, the neighbors and the families, school, work, gardens. People who could not bear to look only forward and so looked back. To look back was to turn into a tall mound of nothing but grief, dry grief. Not a punishment but a natural consequence. She turned into salt because those who looked back turned into salt. Not a punishment. A fact.

  HE CONTINUED TO ATTEND an English class. Useful to know, even if America was not a possibility for him. Adults as well as the younger ones sat nodding and repeating after the teacher, a well-educated, large-eyed girl from the south of Germany, a tall one with soft, chocolate-colored hair and a crippled hand. She wanted to go to America too, Chaim had heard, but would not be let in because of the hand, rumored to have been mutilated in camp experiments. Chaim loved the way her words sounded, long and flowing, slow, not clipped and fast like the words of the English soldiers.

  Her friend came into the class every few days. Her lover? The students, young and old both, wondered aloud. He was a bit older than she, and also very cultured, a music teacher from Vienna. He would listen to her from the back until she ended the class. She would fold her papers into her satchel and walk slowly, elegantly, to greet him at the doorway. On days the friend came in, Chaim would put his notebooks in his own satchel with care, to prolong the time he could watch Tina and Leo greeting each other. Leo would take Tina’s crippled hand in his every time, and she would pull her hand away from him every time. Then he would place his hands in his pockets, and she would slip her arm through his elbow, her withered fingers hanging downward.

  One day Leo came in earlier, in the middle of class. Tina looked up. He was accompanied by a child, a plump and surly little girl, perhaps ten years old.

  “My friends,” said Leo, in English, “we have a performance to give.” The students looked up at him, uncomprehending.

  They haven’t learned those words in English, Leo. Tina addressed the group in German. A little concert, she said. Almost. An English song?

  American, said Leo.

  The girl moved in front of Tina’s desk. She peered out from a hood of dark eyebrows at the gray teenagers and thin adults sitting at the long tables and began to sing.

  “Heaven, I’m in heaven.” Her voice was clear and confident, her sound oddly deep, almost a woman’s. She took a breath, “And my ha-ht beats so that I can ha-ha speak.”

  Leo! said Tina.

  Sssh! Don’t distract her! whispered Leo in German.

  But the girl had lost track of the words. Still she continued to sing the melody: “Dee dee dee dee da da da da dee dee da da”—her voice climbing, but steady, then another quick breath, during which Chaim thought he could hear someone giggling—“Dee dee da together da da cheek to cheek.”

  The words came back, or at least they were sounds divisible like words, Chaim couldn’t be sure. She went through another verse, steadier, unsmiling, her voice controlled, a strange confidence for so small a child, a confidence no doubt instilled by the approval, the genuine seriousness, with which her teacher Leo treated her. Even Tina, her embarrassment somewhat quelled, looked at her with interest.

  The child finished.

  Bravo, said an adult in the back of the room.

  Bravo, agreed Chaim. A few of the students began to clap. The little girl’s mouth moved upward for a moment, a grimace of acknowledgment, not quite a smile. Then she turned away to stand by the door.

  You are terrible, Leo, muttered Tina. Terrible! Silly! In front of my students!

  But she was laughing a little. Leo thrust his chin forward and bowed to the class.

  “Thank you, my friends,” he said, “for your attention.”

  Someone clapped again.

  He continued in German, Basia and I will take our leave and let you continue with your very serious teacher.

  But Leo too was serious. He may have been playing, flirting with Tina, but also he wanted the class to be impressed with a talented child. And Chaim was impressed, not just by the little girl’s nerve but also by the admiration she elicited. Chaim observed Tina’s pale lips as she tried to bring the class back to its regular lesson, the past tenses of come and go, have and
be. He didn’t have all the words of the song divided out in his head, but he thought he understood the main theme of it, a man who felt himself in paradise with his lover. It was a lovely idea, that touching another person, another human, was what it felt to be in the presence of God. He liked the thought, and as he watched Tina, her face straight and calm, a mask, he thought that she too must like it. They had something in common.

  TINA, TINA, TINA, SAID PAVEL.

  Chaim felt his face grow hot.

  Why don’t you ask this Tina? continued Pavel. Let your teachers come, let them see what we have taught you.

  TINA BROUGHT LEO. IN the Roundhouse, the domed building of the camp where the committee of Jews met, the room used as a chapel held a real crowd, linked, uneven, jagged. People binding themselves to one another, humming to themselves, groaning through the memorial prayer. Chaim looked out at Pavel. Pavel looked solemn, a hard line on his face to mark the seriousness of the occasion. And on the other side of the aisle, there was Fela in a dress of dark red, and Rayzele, who had helped carry the food to the Roundhouse that morning. A wind of bitterness swept though Chaim—these were strangers, all of them, even Rayzele, with her newly fierce gaze, strangers performing rituals his father had neglected and his grandparents had wept over. He wanted to paint over the images in the crowd with pictures of his loved ones, but his imagination was stubborn, refused to do its work, took in only the haggard young faces of the living congregants, the pale smile of Fela, barley waves of hair framing her slim eyebrows, the long chin of Pavel, jutting with ownership and pride.

  He began his portion.