by Miryam Sivan
When I think of my other children in bitter Siberia, Suri in charge, I collapse with grief. When Raizel cries for Zizi, her twin, her lost limb, I fill with despair. I hold my babies closer and try not to think of my parents, my sisters, their children, my cousins, their children, my friends, their children, the Jews of Lublin, their children, the Jews of Lvov, their children, the Jews of Boyen, their children, the Jews of Warsaw, Krakow, Kielce, their children, the lost continent of Europe, each city a shadowy star on the map of my mind, filled with souls set adrift.
A few of the men begin to hatch plans of escape. They are convinced that whoever makes it to mainland Africa, not so far away—the Mozambique Channel at its narrowest is 400 kilometers—can make their way north along the coast. Once in Egypt, they’ll either take refuge with the Jews there, or continue north through the deserts, Sinai and Judea. With the help of Bedouins they’ll slip around British checkpoints into Palestine.
Their talk arouses me beyond words. To bring Raizel and Sholem to the sands of Tel Aviv, to live in the stone lanes of Jerusalem, to work in the citrus orchards of Pardes Hana. It’s too much. An offering of the Garden. I can get crazy just thinking of it. So I stop. It’s too good to be true.
I’ll wait out the war in Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world. I’ll till the hard soil and bless each day that there are no train stations from here going to Treblinka or Auschwitz. I’ll sit with my children under the tall Baobab trees. The skinny branches at the top of their razor-thin trunks are like arms sheltering us. Trees like human beings helpless before cruelty. We’ll learn French and Malagasy. We’ll travel to the tropical coast of the island and learn the language of the lemurs. And in the end, when the madness ends, for it will end, everyone agrees, Hitler will be stopped once the Americans enter the fight, we will return to Kamenets-Podolski, to my medieval walled city on the western front of the Ukraine. I will gather my vagrant children. We will clean the house and weed the garden. Life will begin again. Everyone a little older, a little wiser. Maybe I will even remarry. I am still young and attractive enough. No doubt there will be many widowers after the war. Like me they will need to start again.
“Compare the Jews of Europe and the black masked lemurs of Madagascar,” Isabel said to Woody and put her pen down. The dog ignored her. “From isolation to containment to endangerment. Both survived the onslaughts in the end. But just barely.” Isabel closed the phone’s flashlight and breathed deeply and slowly. She felt empty, but not in a peaceful meditative way. She felt sick empty. Drained of hope. Anguish in this black hole empty because the folly of trying to build bridges of sentences and paragraphs back to Europe was clearer than ever.
“I’m pathetic.” Sorrow pressed down on her. “Suri can’t be spared being stateless and at the mercy of history.” That sentence of hers from decades ago branded forever on Isabel’s brain. “And putting Bella in Madagascar helps nothing. Absolutely nothing. Masturbation. Perversion.”
Isabel dropped the notebook to the floor. So little air under the stairs. Failure taunted her. Tears followed. Her nose ran. Her throat was parched. Her legs stiff. And Woody was suddenly restless. But Isabel wouldn’t budge. She took a tiny sip of water because supplies had to last. She spread her arms out and touched the ceiling, touched the walls. How did people live like this for years? How did they breathe and eat and think and hold on to courage knowing the odds of a happy ending were against them?
But what choice was there when soldiers and dogs hunted outside. But there was choice. There was always the choice to live. For one could also surrender to easeful death, sweeter than to love. Delbo reminded readers of that. No more requiring the impossible from a heart at the end of its resources.
Isabel lay down on the concrete floor. Her head on her arm. Her knees folded. Woody curled into the pocket of her stomach. She looked up at the slight shadow of the stairs that she imagined more than could actually see. She removed Jaim Benjamin’s burning key from her bag and held it firmly in her hand. Her fingers traced the large teeth and intricate curlicues of the head. She brought the key to her mouth. Tasted the cold metal. She brought the key to her forehead as if to bring down a fever. She brought it to her heart to mend the break.
Suddenly there were footsteps. Loud heavy ones. Boots. Her heart stopped for a second then began to knock so hard against her chest it hurt. She sat up quickly to hear better. Did she imagine them? Woody lifted his head. The steps were real enough. A growl gathered in Woody’s throat. Isabel quickly closed his snout with her hand. Not a whimper, not a growl. They were goners if he barked.
Her eyes struggled to hold on to the near insubstantial differentiations of light. As if for sense. Just to have something to hold on to. Her body quaked. Her bladder pressed to give way. Woodshed. Wardrobe. Potato pit. Barn. Poland. Czechoslovakia. Germany. France. Yugoslavia. Romania. Italy. Greece. Holland. Hungary. Belgium. Austria. Albania. Ukraine. Belarus. Latvia. Lithuania. Hungary. 1939. 1940. 1941. 1942. 1943. 1944. 1945.
Woody writhed to free himself. Isabel’s grip on his snout tightened. He threw his head right, left, and pulled away from her. His short back legs anchored to the floor for leverage. There was tapping at the window. A fist banged against the front door. Türen öffnen! Isabel stopped breathing. Her lungs and heart made too much noise. With his paws Woody tried to move Isabel’s hand from his face. She put her other hand on his throat, pushed him down on the concrete floor, then fixed him in place with her thigh. Not now Woodrow, she begged him in her mind, not now. They would find them. Pinned beneath her weight he grew impassive. Isabel stared at the stairs above her head. Someone was on them.
The footsteps stopped. She breathed just enough. Then the steps resumed. For the first time in decades she prayed to whatever cosmic universal force might be listening and begged to live for her children’s sake. For Suri’s. She remembered Yael and the fighting in Nablus. Her insides ran liquid and she peed her pants. She listened with all her might for boots on the stairs and floorboards. For flashlights clicking, rods pounding cushions, for closets turned inside out, for dogs that sniff out flesh. No. If Woody smelled another dog he would go crazy. Dizzy with fear she pushed down harder on Woody, hoping he would understand how critical their situation is. How he must be quiet.
Isabel’s ears and eyes opened as wide as possible, antennae desperately tuned to notes of the death knell. And suddenly there they were. More footsteps on the other side of the wall. She was barely able to bear the tension. The anticipation of brutality. Better a bullet than a beating. Better a snapped neck than torture. Her body collapsed into itself. The pressure on Woody’s small shape increased. Her breaths shortened. There was little air left.
And as suddenly as the footsteps came, they passed. Quiet. Then some more quiet except for her heart’s painful throbbing. She waited. And then waited some more. Maybe the boots were waiting too. But finally she no choice. She was stiff and choking. Slowly, fearfully she unfolded her legs. Her lower back and hip hurt from the concrete floor. She sat up gradually, peeling herself off Woody. He laid still. She waited for him to move as well. He’d be shaky on his legs at first. But then would rise and stretch his spine slowly. Upward then downward facing dog.
But Woody didn’t move. Isabel poked him gently in the ribs. Stillness. She touched his back. Nothing. Her stomach flip-flopped. Bile rose in her throat. What did she do? She was without ballast, a ship gone under in torrential seas. All panic and terror she retched on the floor. How could . . . she have . . . she brought her face close to Woody’s. She saw nothing and only felt his immobility. Another wave of acid came up. She retched again.
She put her hands on Woody’s stomach. To feel for breath. Again she brought her face close to his. A sign of life somewhere? Suddenly he let out a low growl, lifted his head slightly and snapped. Isabel threw herself back. Startled, scared. Woody’s breath was slow and raspy but little by little he raised himself. His legs trembled so much they har
dly supported him. He hobbled to a corner of the dark cube.
“I’m so sorry, Woodrow,” she whispered. “Please don’t be angry. I tried to save us.”
Did she cause internal injuries? A collapsed lung? What did she do? Sometimes mothers suffocated their crying children trying to protect them. Poland. 1944. Nahariya. 1979.
“Woody, please, please forgive me, favorite Jack Russell in the world,” Isabel cried quietly and moved closer to him. “Leon told me to accept the cut and the scab,” she said with a slight melodic intonation, a golem’s lullaby. “Enough running the gauntlet. You hear me, boy?” She smudged the א off her forehead. אמת became מת. What once grew from truth now lurched toward death.
“Woody, please, please come to me,” Isabel begged wanting to check his body. She needed to know how badly he was hurt. But he would have nothing to do with her. Fear crashed around her. Yael’s unit fighting house to house. Street to street. Her dread intensified. Something really bad was about to happen. Her whole system just knew it. Liquid ran from her eyes. From her nose. Her stomach cramped. Now, right now she needed to know Yael was alright.
She dumped the contents of her handbag on the floor and blindly reached for the cell phone. Her crying intensified waiting for the phone to turn on. Her hands shook. She couldn’t see the buttons despite the back panel lighting. She was heaving and hyperventilating and managed to push the number four, Yael’s speed-dial number. When the cellular phone company’s pre-recorded message came on instead of the usual message in Yael’s sing-along voice asking one and all to leave their name after the beep, Isabel plummeted. She lost her child. She lost everything. Like in Poland. Like in Germany. Like in Spain. Wszystkie zostały utracone. Alles ist verloren. Todo está perdido. Isabel slumped to the cold concrete floor, lost in a reverb of terror.
3
Later Zakhi told her how when he drove up he saw her car, but couldn’t find her. He walked around the house, peered into the windows but there was no sign of Isabel. He looked in the backyard, under the clementine and loquat trees. He climbed the stairs and looked in the attic. He looked in all the rooms, in the cabinets, and decided she was in town getting them a coffee. After an hour of working on the construction budget, he began to worry.
“Suddenly I heard scratching and whimpering. I followed the sounds to the back bedroom. Then there’s barking from behind a wall. Sounded like Woody. I followed it and opened the closet doors. I saw the narrow shelves stacked on one side and pried open the back panel. Woody jumped out and ran towards the front door.”
Zakhi held her close. “I saw you lying on the floor. I thought you were dead. Wasn’t easy squeezing through that narrow opening. But then I saw your chest move. I felt your pulse. Slow but regular. You fainted.”
Isabel kept her eyes closed. The day light was strong even in December. Zakhi rocked her in his lap, kissed her hair. Children and dogs: not reliable companions in hiding.
“Was the man who built the house a survivor?” she asked faintly.
“Yes,” Zakhi said. “Harvey told me he was. Very proud of his work too. Did everything himself. Said being a carpenter saved his life in Auschwitz.”
“A functionary.”
Zakhi handed her a bottle of water. “I don’t understand this man. He builds a hiding place for himself, for his family, despite the fact that there’s a State, and an army. In 1962!”
Isabel said slowly, “The cannibalistic vortex of history.”
Suddenly her phone gave off a Received Message ring. Maybe Yael. Even bleary, she lurched towards her bag.
“I’ll get it.” Zakhi found the phone.
Isabel looked at it. From Yael.
Back. Talk later. Love you.
Isabel was too relieved to move or respond outwardly. Her finger, stained with maroon lipstick, caressed Yael’s message on the little screen. Tears came. Woody ran back into the house and laid down beside her. He leaned into her. Apparently all was forgiven. She melted into Zakhi’s chest and arms, into the reliable comfort of her little dog. Zakhi pulled her even closer and hummed, Oyfn Veg Shteyt a Boym, a lullaby Suri sometimes sang about a forlorn tree and a mother fussing over her child. As if a winter coat slipped off Isabel’s shoulders and the heat of day was finally able to penetrate icy darkness, absence didn’t tug at her anymore.
“The dead are entitled to their quiet too,” Isabel whispered.
Zakhi stopped humming. They sat quietly in Harvey Grunwald’s empty house. Then he cleared his throat. “My grandmother sang Rozhinkes mit Mandlen to me. Want to hear it?”
Isabel nodded, yes, very much. Zakhi’s grandmother, Brayne, came from Boyen, a stone’s throw from Kamenets-Podolski. Very few degrees of separation between them. A landsman, Suri would say. Those who share the same geography. When Zakhi began to sing, Isabel imagined Bella holding her close. Skin talcum soft, spotted as a leopard. Soothing terrors, softening the blows.
In dem beis hamikdosh
In a vinkle cheider
Zitst di almone bas-tzion aleyn.
Ihr ben yochidl Yidele vigt zi keseider
Un zingt im tzum shlofn a lideleh
Sheyn: Ay-lu-lu.
Unter Yidele’s vigele
Shteyt a klor-vayse tsigele,
Dos tsigele iz geforn handlen
Dos vet zine dayn baruf
Rozhinkes mit mandlen,
Shlof-zhe Yidele shlof.
✶
After a three-day melancholia spent in bed, Isabel resurfaced. She called Suri and told her what happened under the stairs. It was not easy, but she needed to tell her mother. Simple as that. The next morning at eight o’clock the doorbell rang.
Isabel opened the door. “What?” She could not believe her eyes when she saw Suri standing there. “Suri. Is everything . . .”
“I had to come. We need to talk.”
Isabel hugged Suri and brought her into the house.
“Savta!” Uri ran from the kitchen and into Suri’s arms.
“Savta?” Lia ran downstairs and joined the group hug.
Isabel still couldn’t believe it. “Suri, is everything all right? Are you . . .”
“Everything’s wonderful. I just missed you. Even at my age I can be spontaneous. Hal brought me to the airport yesterday morning, I got on a noon flight, and here I am.”
Isabel was overwhelmed. Happily so. But nervous. Lia took Uri to school on her way to the Technion. Suri showered and Isabel made a fresh pot of coffee and waited. She knew Suri didn’t just hop on a plane because she missed them. They had been living apart for twenty-four years and this was a first. Trips were usually planned well in advance. Intra-country tours mapped out. A stop in Europe, either coming or going, also a must.
“That’s good.” Suri came into the kitchen and took a seat across from Isabel at the table. Woody placed his two front paws on Suri’s lap. He wanted up. “C’mon, boy.”
That was also a first. Suri was no fan of pets and always maintained a polite distance from her daughter’s menagerie. Woody jumped, gave Suri’s face a quick lick as if he too couldn’t believe this makeover, and curled up adorably in her lap before she changed her mind.
“So,” Isabel said. “Hungry?”
“No.”
“What’s up?”
“Issie, what you told me . . . about you, about Woody . . . that hiding space. It affected me very badly.” She looked directly into Isabel’s eyes. Tears filled hers. Had Isabel ever seen Suri cry? “I called Zizi and Lola after you and I spoke. I hope it’s okay but I had to share it with someone.”
“No problem, Suri. I don’t . . .” and stopped herself. Now was not the time to sting Suri by emphasizing that she didn’t have a problem talking about pain.
“I realized after I spoke to them, after we discussed this terrible terrible,” she choked, “liability you live with, that the time has co
me for me to tell you about the war.”
Isabel breathed deeply and she took Suri’s free hand in hers. She squeezed it. Suri’s other hand rested on Woody’s nape.
“In Siberia, we suffered terribly. Not just cold. Not just starvation. Not just deprivation. But four little children with no protectors. No one to place their body between us and other adults.” She licked her lips and took a sip of coffee. “Shiya died one very cold night from hypothermia. We were in a wooden shack with a tin roof. We clung together as one body to keep ourselves as warm as we could. But in the morning, his face was blue, his gorgeous mouth blue. We didn’t understand at first that he was dead. We were so young. I ran over to the barn and told the farmer. But before he came back with me to the shack, he threw me on the ground and raped me. And spit at me. He told me I killed my brother and would go to hell.”
Suri held Isabel’s hand tighter.
“You see, he had offered to let us all sleep inside the house by the stove if I had sex with him. He was old and fat and smelled of vodka. He hadn’t washed in months. I was eleven years old. A virgin. Of course I said no. He said the shack was what we deserved. And only for one night.”
Here it was. Molly was right. Only sexual shame could drive such silence. And guilt.
“I’m so sorry, Suri.”
“There’s more.” Her hand slipped under Woody’s warm belly. He adjusted himself. He liked this. “After that I understood the rules of the game. If Zizi and Lola and I were to survive, I’d have to let men have sex with me.”
Isabel stopped breathing.
“After the first few times I learned not to be there at all. I went somewhere else in my mind. Usually to my mother in our kitchen. Or I focused on the warm stoves, the soup, the bread, and the promises I received that my sisters wouldn’t be touched.”