Stalemate

by Icchokas Meras

  And Abraham Lipman told Liza a story.

  He told her that there once lived a father who had a daughter named Taibalé and that Taibalé was the youngest of all her father’s children. And two people, a childless couple, took her into their home and wanted Taibalé to eat more spoonfuls of soup and to eat all the solids. As the days, weeks, and months passed, God created a miracle, and those two childless people gave birth to another person. And now that new person wanted to eat, and she must get mother’s milk, because for all people mother’s milk was like the juice of the earth that nurtured trees. And she must be protected, that tiny person, pressed to our hearts and caressed, because her mother did not exist, because her father did not exist, and because Taibalé did not exist.

  Liza slowly freed her arms.

  She was still afraid to look and just barely, barely opened her eyes.

  She touched the infant with her hands and again trembled. At first she tightly closed, but then later opened, her large black eyes. She slowly turned those swaddling clothes, in which life fluttered, and gave the baby her other breast.

  Then Liza began to weep.

  She wept quietly, very quietly. She could again hear how the tiny girl hurried to eat. Tears rolled from her eyes and fell without a sound on the swaddling clothes. There were many tears, as large as heavy drops of dew.

  The men, seeing the tears, sighed. They sat listening to the way a tiny newborn human sucks mother’s milk and were happy that Liza was weeping.

  It is good when a woman weeps. She has many reasons to shed her tears.

  It is bad when a woman cannot weep.

  The Fiftieth Move

  • 1 •

  “What!” Schoger shouted. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  The stalemate is near, Isaac thought. I knew that if I tried to win I could force a stalemate. I knew…. But…. And what if I win?

  “What!” Schoger shouted again.

  • 2 •

  “Isia…” Esther whispers in my ear. “Isia, someone’s moaning right here, right nearby.”

  I also think I hear someone moaning nearby. “You sit quietly, and I’ll go look.”

  She grasps my hand, doesn’t want to release it. But my hand slowly slips out of hers, and I go.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I say to her. “Sit here quietly.”

  The space behind the gates is deep. I look into all the corners but can’t see anything. Moaning again. Now I know where it’s coming from. It’s coming from the other side. I draw near carefully, pull back the creaking gates. A man lies there, leaning against the wall. He must be sleeping. But that man is very familiar, and I can’t believe my eyes.

  “Esther…” I call out quietly.

  She comes, stands next to me, and catches her breath sharply.

  We’re both afraid.

  “Is it Janek?” I ask.

  “Is it Janek?” she asks.

  It’s Janek.

  Esther falls to her knees near the man, near Janek, and I grasp his mud-covered fingers.

  He gives a start and wants to jump up, but I don’t let him.

  “Was I asleep?” he asks. “Did I sleep through it?”

  He still doesn’t understand that it’s us, Esther and Isia.

  He rubs his eyes. At first his face is worried. Then Janek tries to smile.

  “You…” Janek says. “You both…were searching for me?”

  We nod our heads.

  “I knew it…. I knew it all the time!…” Janek smiles strangely. “I was just afraid to think about it.”

  * * *

  —

  He can say whatever he wants while Esther and I look at each other.

  “Where are your stars?”

  “Stars? Far away. Very far away, near the forest. And what about them?”

  “You can’t be without them. You know what happens when they grab you and you’re not wearing your stars.”

  “Yes, right, I remember.”

  “What will happen now?” Esther asks.

  She’s very worried; she has forgotten all her earlier troubles; she only needs stars. She has forgotten that a little while ago Janek did not exist. She has forgotten that we ourselves walked through the city without our stars and that every policeman could have shot us right there on the spot. She has forgotten that we have to sneak into the passing column so the guards won’t see us. She has forgotten everything. She now needs only stars.

  I think for a minute and then unravel the star from my chest.

  “Can you walk?” I ask Janek.

  “Slowly, but I can. I can, I can, of course!” he concludes.

  I sew my star onto his chest and explain my plan.

  I say to him, “You will walk in front and will lean back against me. One star will be on your chest, and the other will be on my back.”

  “And if they notice?” Janek asks.

  Yes, it’s obvious that Janek is ill. If he were well, he wouldn’t ask such strange questions.

  “There’s no way they’ll notice. No way!” I explain to him and to Esther. “You’ll walk leaning back against me….”

  He understands. He smiles again.

  “An ordinary plan. Very simple, straight from the chessboard,” Janek tries to joke, and moans again.

  I look at his baked lips.

  “It’s nothing, really,” Janek explains. “It’s nothing….”

  * * *

  —

  Footsteps…

  Footsteps!

  Women.

  Esther goes out first.

  We press against the crack.

  She’s in the column. She’s among the rest. She’s gone.

  Again, footsteps…

  Tired, heavy footsteps.

  Now it’s our turn.

  Now!

  It’s my column. Rudi nods along nearby. He looks down at me and at Janek, at Janek and at me. His eyes are large; his yellow eyelashes hang in the air; he’s more surprised than usual.

  He nudges his neighbor; he nudges another one, that one, still another. Many people nudge each other, push us to the middle of the column, and press against us from all sides.

  What stars? Where are the stars?

  There are too few stars?

  There are too many of them. Each person has two. Isn’t that enough?

  There are so many of them that they might as well not even exist. Are there too few stars in the heavens? There are millions, and they’re not just yellow. They know how to twinkle in all colors. They glitter like rainbows.

  There are very many of them.

  Can there be too few stars?

  * * *

  —

  We walk through the gates.

  We’re in the ghetto.

  “Get some water,” Janek asks. “Now you can get some water.”

  Rudi is waiting for us. He wants to tell us something, but Janek leans back against him while I run to get some water.

  I bring back a lot, a bucketful.

  Janek falls to the ground next to it.

  He drinks, and drinks, and drinks.

  Then he catches his breath.

  “Water…” Janek says. “What tastes better than water?”

  Again he drinks, and drinks, and drinks.

  “Do you know what I want to say to you?” Rudi says to me.

  It seems he has already forgotten that not long ago we were only two, that our fighting unit of three was incomplete, and that he himself had offered to find someone. He has forgotten everything. He cares only about business and business. He always has something to say, that Rudi, things we need and don’t need to hear.

  “Do you know what I wanted to say to you?” Rudi says again. He looks at me; he looks at Janek; he looks at Esther, who is standing nearby; and t
hen he keeps talking, “You all have to get ready quickly. In five days, at night, you’ll be going out into the forests.”

  He likes to joke, that Rudi, right?

  He knows how to bark like a dog and meow like a cat.

  “You’re joking—right, Rudi?” I ask him.

  Rudi is angry.

  If Rudi is angry, it means that it’s true.

  Us?

  To the forests?

  It’s hard to understand. Very hard.

  Rudi could have told us slowly, could have explained it all to us, but he’s fired it off as if from a machine gun and left it at that.

  Us?

  To the forests?

  Yes.

  In five days, at night.

  * * *

  —

  I know it’s hard for Janek to speak. He twists his lips. Smiles. Wants to say something.

  “I knew this would happen.”

  That’s what Janek wants to say.

  He knows everything….

  He’d be better off keeping silent, saying nothing, and quickly getting well.

  “Here.” Rudi presses a piece of paper into my hand as he goes.

  I unfold it carefully. The paper is wrinkled. But I can easily read what’s written there.

  …The Russian Army successfully forced a crossing across the Dnieper and occupied bridgeheads in three places: to the north from Kiev, to the south from Perejaslav, and to the southeast from Kremenchug.

  The Red Army, attacking toward Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Gomel, with a wide front forced its way into White Russia.

  The Fifty-First Move

  • 1 •

  “Listen, you!” Schoger said grimly, tossing a chess piece from hand to hand.

  Isaac barely, barely smiled.

  “Listen, you! Don’t forget what you’re playing for. You’re not playing for just a mug of beer or for some stinking herring. You’re putting everything you have on the line—your life.”

  Schoger pressed the chess piece in his hand. The wood crackled, and the pawn’s round head rolled across the chessboard.

  “There must be a stalemate today,” Isaac answered.

  Schoger bent down low over the table. Arching his neck, he stared Isaac straight in the eyes and whispered, “Think it over…. You can still lose…. Today is my day.”

  • 2 •

  “I begat a son, Isaac,” said Abraham Lipman.

  • 3 •

  Two of them were walking.

  In front, his hands clasped behind his back, Abraham Lipman hurried down the street.

  In back of him, on the sidewalk, sauntered a policeman.

  Two of them were walking. Lipman was hurrying, and the policeman had to hurry to keep up. The policeman was hot; his heavy rifle weighed down his right shoulder, and he constantly prodded himself and swore.

  “Where are you hurrying, where are you hurrying, you old goat?” he snorted.

  Lipman pretended not to hear. He had to hurry.

  It was a beautiful autumn evening. The sun, having rolled to the other side of the sky, elongated the shadows of trees, houses, and men. Somewhere near the edge of the city, in small gardens or beneath windows, blossomed fragrant autumn flowers, and above the river gathered the mists of night, which were still only a warm transparent blanket that sucked into itself cooling drops of water.

  Lipman did not glance around. He saw nothing and didn’t worry about the autumn and its fragrant flowers. As he walked, hunchbacked because of the weight of years and other burdens, he quickened his step and proudly raised a chin grizzled with a mottled whitening beard. His entire head was raised high and covered with an old worn hat whose brim, also raised, did not cover Lipman’s black wrinkled eyes.

  The ghetto council had learned that Schoger had not received any instructions about the children, that he had devised the plan all on his own, so it was now sending Abraham Lipman to the commandant of the ghetto. There was very little time. All the ghetto children under ten had to be at the gates to be taken away tomorrow morning. Everyone knew where the children were to be taken.

  The policeman who was following Lipman thought, If I’m already sweat soaked, then how does that old devil stand it?

  Aloud, he said, “Don’t run—don’t run. You’ll make it. Do you think Schoger likes uninvited guests? Ha! Just don’t be surprised if you leave there feet first. Ha!”

  And he thought, These are incomprehensible people. Strange people. They run to meet death. Ha!

  He straightened his slipping rifle. “And what if I up and shoot you right here?” he asked. “It’s already after six, and you’re forbidden to walk in the streets.”

  Abraham Lipman again pretended not to hear, but then he turned and replied in a hoarse, muffled voice, “I can’t answer you, because we are forbidden to talk to non-Jews in the streets.”

  “Ha! Old devil!” the policeman muttered, and wiped the sweat from his face with the green sleeve of his coat.

  The two of them walked, stumbling often. Lipman hurried, and the policeman tried to keep up, and that’s why he walked so unevenly—here more quickly, there more slowly—and occasionally swore.

  It was a beautiful autumn evening, colorful flowers blossomed somewhere, and a swift river gathered onto its back the mists of night. But all that was far from here, where Abraham Lipman walked on the street, followed by the policeman who sauntered down the sidewalk. Schoger’s house, a small two-story villa, was already near. It loomed there behind the high fence, showing off its newly painted walls and red roof.

  Lipman stopped by the small gate to catch his breath.

  The policeman eventually caught his breath too.

  They rang, but no one answered. They pushed open the gate and stepped slowly down the brick-covered path lined with a square-cornered, well-trimmed hedge.

  A guard opened the door.

  “The council sent me,” Lipman said.

  The guard walked off, then returned and showed them to the room in which Schoger was waiting. Lipman had been there before. He knew the room, and without hesitating, with firm steps, he walked toward the tall double doors with the gleaming brass handles.

  The policeman remained in the corridor. He was happy that he didn’t have to thrust himself in front of Schoger’s gaze. Lipman walked into the room and closed the tall heavy doors behind him.

  The room was large and filled with walnut furniture.

  The finest craftsmen in the ghetto had made that furniture for Schoger.

  Why did we give him this furniture? Lipman thought tensely. We’ve given him much, but this furniture…!

  With a wrinkled forehead he finally remembered: For Estonia…. That’s right, for Estonia. He wanted to take some of our workers to some camp in Estonia. We gave him the walnut furniture, and he didn’t take those men away. That’s right, for Estonia….

  Near the wall, in which stretched three tall windows, stood a long table with ten chessboards inlaid in its top. A yellow beechwood square, a dark redwood, a yellow beechwood, a dark redwood.

  We gave him this table later, Lipman remembered. That’s right, later, when he wanted to reduce our food rations. He wanted to reduce our food rations terribly, but he later didn’t reduce them all that much.

  Behind the table now sat five officers from Rosenberg’s staff. They were all hunched over, staring intensely at chess pieces before them. Schoger paced back and forth on the other side of the table, from one officer to the next, and, smiling, moved the pieces. He was playing all five at the same time.

  When the door opened and then closed, Schoger glanced up.

  He looked not at Lipman, but at Lipman’s old finger-worn hat.

  Lipman hesitated for a moment but did not take off his hat.

  The first time Lipman had not taken off his hat, Schoger had given him ten l
ashes. The whip was a leather-wrapped metal wire.

  “That’s our custom,” Lipman had answered. “I can’t do anything else.”

  The second time Lipman had not taken off his hat, Schoger had given him fifteen lashes. The whip was the same.

  “That’s our…custom,” Lipman had answered. “I can’t do anything else.”

  The third time, Lipman also hadn’t taken off his hat. Schoger had given him twenty lashes, counting them out himself.

  When Lipman got up off the bench, he had said to Schoger, “That’s…our…custom…. I…can’t…do anything else.”

  Then Schoger had given him five more, laughed, and walked away.

  Yes, he looked at Lipman’s hat again now, but Lipman hesitated only a moment and did not take it off, and Schoger said nothing.

  Schoger kept playing chess as if he were playing a child’s game—he walked smiling from one partner to the next and made his moves almost without thinking, and his opponents conceded one by one.

  Schoger thanked them, and they clicked their heels and left.

  Then he sat down on the table, on the small yellow beechwood and dark redwood squares of one of the chessboards—the first or the tenth—and stared at Lipman.

  “Come closer,” he said.

  Lipman went closer.

  “You see what kind of dog snouts they are,” Schoger said. “Not one of them won a game.”

  “Not one,” Lipman replied.

  “Did you see how I took care of them? Did you see how they conceded? My God! One of them could have won, the one who was sitting in the middle. Do you know him?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “He could have won, but he would have had to sacrifice his queen, and he was afraid. Ha, ha, ha!…Do you know what I’m going to say to you, Lipman? To play chess one has to have a Jewish mind.”

  He laughed even louder. “I must have a Jewish mind, huh, Lipman? What do you think?”

  Lipman silently lowered his eyes.

  Schoger looked at the old worn hat, whose brim did not cover the wrinkled eyes, and said, “I knew you’d come to see me today. Did you come on your own or did the council send you?”