Stalemate

by Icchokas Meras

  Revised edition, 2005

  Copyright © 1963, 1998, 2005 by Icchokas Meras

  Original Lithuanian edition published as Lygiosios Trunka Akimirka in 1963, revised Lithuanian edition published in 1998.

  Production Editor: Robert D. Hack

  Text design: Rachel Reiss

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 307 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1807, New York, NY 10001. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Meras, Icchokas, 1934-

  [Lygiosios trunka akimirka. English]

  Stalemate by Icchokas Meras; translated by Jonas Zdanys.—Rev. ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-59051-156-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Lithuania—Fiction. I. Zdanys, Jonas, 1950- II. Title.

  Ebook ISBN 9781635421286

  PG8722.23.E7L913 2004

  891’.9233—dc22

  2004013956

  a_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Beginning

  The Fifth Move

  The Eighth Move

  The Twelfth Move

  The Thirteenth Move

  Before the Seventeenth Move

  The Seventeenth Move

  After the Seventeenth Move

  The Twenty-Eighth Move

  The Thirty-Ninth Move

  The Fortieth Move

  The Forty-Ninth Move

  The Fiftieth Move

  The Fifty-First Move

  The Fifty-Second Move

  The Final Move

  The Beginning

  • 1 •

  When all the pieces were in place, Schoger squinted and paused. Then he picked up one white pawn and one black one, enclosed them tightly in the hollow made by his clasped hands, and began to shake them rapidly.

  “Who will make the first move? You or I?” he asked.

  Schoger’s ears and scalp wiggled.

  He worried.

  If I were an Indian, Isaac thought, looking at the moving hair, I would like to take that scalp.

  “Don’t you know?” Schoger asked.

  He had already extended his hands.

  “If you don’t know, then I’ll tell you. Everything’s a game of chance, a lottery. Chess, the world, and your life—a lottery.”

  He sits secure but still worries, thought Isaac.

  “You know what? You can choose. I’ll give you the black. People usually lose lotteries.”

  “The left,” Isaac replied.

  “As you wish.”

  Schoger unfurled the fingers of his left hand. The white pawn slipped from his palm.

  “Jew’s luck!” He laughed angrily. “Don’t blame me—you chose it.”

  So I really have to die? Isaac thought. I don’t want to. Is there anyone in the whole world who wants to die?

  But the white pieces were his.

  He turned the chessboard around, looked at it briefly, and made the first move.

  • 2 •

  Do you know how the sun shines in the spring? You probably have no idea how it shines. How could you know if you have never seen the smile that lighted Buzia’s face.

  The spring sun shines like Buzia’s smile, and her smile is as bright as the sun in spring.

  I know. I saw her yesterday before the day had ended. I’m sorry that I saw her for the first time only then. She lives at the very end of the dark street, on the other side of the ghetto.

  I was so stupid all this time. I didn’t know that Buzia lived on the other side of the ghetto.

  She was walking with her friends.

  I looked at her with surprise and then stopped and could not tear my eyes away. Then she laughed. She shrugged her thin shoulders as if not understanding why I had blocked her way. She laughed and kept on walking.

  Then she turned around, and I saw her smile again.

  Now I know how the sun shines in the spring. It shines like Buzia’s smile, and Buzia’s smile is the spring sun.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t know her name yesterday. But I saw her and remembered the words from Sholom Aleichem’s Song of Songs.

  I remembered the first book I read as a child, and to that stranger I gave the girl’s name from the Song of Songs—Buzia, and I myself took the boy’s name—Shimek.

  I wanted to be Shimek and wanted her to be Buzia.

  I wanted the narrow streets surrounded by the high ghetto fence to disappear.

  I wanted there to be fewer people around me marked by those yellow stars.

  I wanted us to be small and young and alone together. Shimek and Buzia. Sitting in an endless wide meadow, on the soft grass, where I could tell her…

  Buzia—a shortened form of her name: Esther-Liba, Lubuzia, Buzia. She is a year or two older than I, and together our ages add up to less than twenty. Now, please figure out how old Buzia and I are. But I guess that really doesn’t matter. It would be more interesting if I told you a little more about her.

  My oldest brother, Benny, lived in a village and rented a windmill. He was an excellent shot, rode like a cavalryman, and swam like a fish. One day in the summer he was swimming in the river and drowned. The proverb was fulfilled—“All good swimmers drown.”

  He left us the windmill, a few horses, a young widow, and a baby. We refused the mill, sold the horses. The young widow remarried, moved somewhere far away, and left us the baby.

  And she was Buzia.

  Do you know where I am now?

  I’m on the other side of the ghetto, at the end of the dark narrow street where Buzia lives. I’m sitting on a flat stone doorsill. An odd coldness radiates from it and seizes my entire body, but I do not get up. Maybe it’s just a clump of frozen earth left over from winter that has not yet melted in the warmth of spring, but still I sit. I’m warm. If my mother were alive, she would fix her kerchief, which lies flat on her head, and would clap her hands.

  “Isia!” she’d cry out. “Isia, you’re a lad already, you could even be called a youth, and you sit on the cold stone like some urchin. Isia! You’re almost a man—if I’m not revealing some secret—and watch out, you’ll come home with some fatal illness, God forbid!”

  I sit. I’m warm.

  We have just come home from work. I washed up immediately, grabbed my good blue shirt, put it on, and ran here to this flat stone doorsill.

  I wait for her. I wait for Buzia to appear.

  * * *

  —

  When you sit in front of a house, on its stone doorsill, you can overhear everything: each footstep, each creak, the smallest sound. When the door slams, I think it’s Buzia. When footsteps rustle, I think it’s Buzia. When the wooden stairs creak, I wait anxiously—Buzia will soon appear.

  She does not appear; she does not come out. Maybe Buzia doesn’t even exist? Maybe I just imagined the first book of Song of Songs, which I read as a child?

  The door again squeaks, footsteps again rustle, and the old wooden steps creak. She has to come out now. It can’t be any other way.


  Yes, it’s Buzia.

  I jump up, stare at her, and don’t know what to say. All my words are muddled, tangled in my head, and I can’t find a single one. Her hair is the color of ash. Her eyes, large and blue, stare at me silent and surprised.

  I have to say at least one word.

  And I mumble it.

  “Buzia…” I say, and I want to laugh out loud at myself.

  She laughs.

  Her pearl-white teeth glitter. Her lips sparkle like red ribbons, and her cheeks bloom like flowers.

  “Who are you, young man?” she asks.

  And laughs again.

  “I’m…Isia,” I say to her quickly. “I’m Isaac Lipman, but you can call me Isia.”

  She does not laugh. She listens.

  “Let’s go, Buzia my girl,” I say to her. “I’ll tell you who I am.”

  “Why do you call me Buzia?”

  “Let’s go—I’ll tell you everything.”

  * * *

  —

  She goes with me.

  I would like for us to walk together for a long time. I would like to go to the wide meadow and sit across from her on the soft grass. I would tell her everything she wanted to know. But there is no meadow here, and we cannot leave. Guards stand at the gates.

  Well, in any event: We can sit down together in this yard. There are no people here, only a long log and some sort of wooden box. We can sit wherever we’d like, all the while pretending to be in a wide, fragrant, blossoming meadow.

  Right, Buzia?

  She says nothing.

  * * *

  —

  We walk into the yard and sit down, I on the log and she on the box. She clambers onto the box, draws her knees up, clasps them with both hands, and rests her chin. I smile. I wanted her to sit like that, her legs drawn, knees up. Her wide dress covers her legs; her ash-colored hair spills over her shoulders. I could sit like this for a long time and watch Buzia. I don’t want to talk. Why talk, if we can sit like this and look at each other?

  But she wants to talk, wants to know who I am.

  “Who are you, young Isia?” she asks, and two smiling imps appear in her large blue eyes.

  “I’m Isia,” I say. “Lipman. I was born here, in this town, and my father’s a tailor, and his fingers have as many needle pricks as there are sands in the sea.”

  Of course, I could tell her about my brother, who is almost a philosopher, who studied at the university but couldn’t finish because the war began.

  Of course, I could add that my sister, Ina Lipman, sings wonderfully and before the war had traveled through most of the world.

  I could tell her about this and about that.

  It would be better if I said nothing. She’ll think that I’m too proud of my brother and sister, that I’m turning up my nose. She’ll even become angry, will get up and walk away, leaving me all alone. And I will again think that there is no such Buzia in the world, that I only imagined the first book of Song of Songs, which I read as a child.

  “Ina Lipman is your sister?” Buzia asks.

  “My sister…”

  “The famous singer?”

  “Yes,” I answer quickly, “but that doesn’t matter, right? She is she, my sister, and I’m me, Isia.”

  She nods in agreement, and I’m satisfied. She nods rapidly, rapidly, and her gray hair billows like the waves of windblown water, like fields of ripened grain.

  * * *

  —

  Don’t be angry. I lied.

  I didn’t mean to.

  I said that she was a year or two older than I and that together our ages added up to less than twenty.

  That’s not true. I only wish it were. That’s how it’s written in Song of Songs.

  In reality we are both quite old. And I am older, not Buzia. She’s sixteen, and I’m seventeen and a half. Now it’s easy to figure out how old we are together. We are thirty-three and a half. That’s a lot, right?

  We count together.

  At first I bend one, then another, and finally all the fingers on my right hand, then quickly bend those on my left, but there aren’t enough fingers. Then I carefully take Buzia by the hands and bend her fingers, but there still aren’t enough because there are too many years.

  We laugh because there are so many years and not enough fingers.

  And she says, “Even if there were enough, we still couldn’t count right. One finger equals one year. Where will we get the half?”

  I don’t laugh. I say nothing.

  We could count out our years.

  I have a half finger, but Buzia hasn’t noticed it.

  It happened long ago, more than a year ago. A large brick of metal was lying near the gates of the ghetto. Schoger called me over and told me to pick it up. I lifted one end up from the stone pavement. I wanted to put both hands under it, but Schoger shouted something and jumped onto the brick. I didn’t manage to get the middle finger of my left hand out in time, and Schoger pinched half of it off. We could count out our years, but I don’t want to. I’ll keep the fingers of my left hand curled into a fist, and Buzia will never know that we could count out half a year.

  * * *

  —

  I laugh again, then ask, “What’s your name, Buzia?”

  “My name’s Esther.”

  She clasped her knees with her hands again and rested her chin.

  “I was born here, in this town. I have no brothers or sisters. I had an older brother, but he no longer exists. My father’s a doctor, and my mother’s a nurse. They work very hard, day and night. They work in the ghetto hospital, and it’s hard on them. You know that Jews are forbidden to contract contagious diseases. But there are so many such illnesses, and that’s why my mother and father and all the rest there treat people whose sicknesses have been officially diagnosed and recorded as other than what they really are.”

  She speaks, but I hear nothing.

  “What’s your name?” I ask again. “What?”

  “Esther.”

  I’m surprised.

  “Liba, too?”

  “No, just Esther.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” I shout. “It doesn’t matter! Your name is Esther-Liba.”

  Her eyes again are two smiling imps.

  “Do you want me to be Buzia?” she asks, and squints.

  “I want you to be Esther-Liba, Lubuzia, Buzia. And I would always tell you the same story from Song of Songs.”

  “But then you will have to be Shimek.”

  “I’ll be Shimek. Do you want to hear this?”

  * * *

  —

  “…I, Shimek, had an older brother, Benny. He was an excellent shot and swam like a fish. One day in the summer he was swimming and drowned. The proverb was fulfilled—’All good swimmers drown.’ He left a water-driven mill, a couple of horses, a young widow, and a baby. We refused the mill. Sold the horses. The widow remarried and moved somewhere far away. We took in the child. And she was Buzia. Do you hear that, Buzia?”

  Just then a stranger’s voice rang out. “And where has this young Sholom Aleichem come from?” the voice asks.

  I get up, go toward him, and say, “I’m Isia, Isaac Lipman. I’m not Sholom Aleichem. You can see for yourself that my hair’s short and that I don’t wear glasses. And who’re you?”

  “I’m Janek.”

  That’s how he answers, smiling.

  “Is that a nickname?” I ask.

  “Ho!” he replies.

  “You must be Yankel or something, and that’s why they call you Janek.”

  “Ho, ho, ho!”

  “What’s your full name?”

  “Janek,” he answers.

  “I’ve never heard such a strange name.”

  “Do you know what psiakrey* means? That’s
me,” he laughs. “I’m Polish, and my name is Janek.”

  In reality, his hair is quite light, his nose short and straight, and his eyes blue. He speaks Yiddish differently than we do. He could be a Pole…. But why is he in the ghetto?

  They both laugh. They’re happy and content, and I don’t understand a thing.

  Just then my father comes into the yard. My father’s quite worried.

  “Here you are,” he says. “I’ve been all over the ghetto. Help me find Ina. Where could she have disappeared to? Let’s go, Isia—let’s go.”

  My new friends do not laugh, looking closely at us. I wave my hand at them and go off with my father to look for Ina.

  Really, where could she have disappeared to?

  * Polish: “the cursed” or “scoundrel, rascal, bastard”

  The Fifth Move

  • 1 •

  Schoger moved his bishop slowly, with two fingers, gracefully, as if carrying something fragile and valuable.

  I began the game badly, Isaac thought. It’s difficult today. But who’s to blame for that? Me or someone else?

  “I respect a slow attack,” Schoger said. “A blitzkrieg is not always successful, of course.”

  I can’t understand what he wants, Isaac said to himself. Is he reassuring himself or me? Schoger would be an even better player if he didn’t think so much all the time about winning. What did he say before? A lottery…

  Chess, the world, all of life—a lottery.

  Why am I sitting here across from him?

  Risk and chance…

  Are they the same?

  • 2 •

  “I begat a daughter, Ina,” said Abraham Lipman.

  • 3 •

  Two guards always stand near the great gate. One is a German soldier; the other, a ghetto policeman.

  That’s how it is today. But today it must be different. A Czech, not a German, will stand at the gate. I really want to remember his name but can’t, no matter how hard I try. It’s similar to a Polish name, and Polish names are like it. But it doesn’t really matter. I’ll find out again and hammer it into my head. What’s important is that the Czech agreed to let me out into the city for an hour yesterday and didn’t even ask where and why I was going.