Isaac's Beacon

by David L. Robbins

  In the green distance, a locomotive chugged into view; the train’s whistle slipped across the rolling Hessian hills. Hugo cringed, surprising himself. A German train was coming for him. He inched away from the tracks while the train screeched to a halt.

  Vince stepped up beside Hugo. The Aliyah Bet man shouted good luck to them all. Vince, rangy and not hounded by recollections, jumped up onto the train car to help the women clamber aboard. Two hundred Jews stared out at hills they hoped never to see again. Vince, eager to pitch in, had no real notion of the moment, to leave Germany alive, to reach for Palestine, not just for an American’s hand. The reporter had in his pocket papers that would let him in or out of Palestine, on or off this train. He had in his chest only the desire to make a name for himself. Hugo didn’t begrudge Vince this. He’d take what help he could, and Vince’s strong grasp lifted him onto the train.

  When all were loaded in three separate cargo cars, the locomotive whistled again and the train jerked forward. The ma’apilim found places to sit on the hay-strewn floor. Vince tried to slide the door shut on them, but Hugo did not let him close them in.

  Hugo kept his distance from Vince. He didn’t want his own trepidations recorded. Let Vince pick at the others for a while. They’d worn shackles, too, and could describe them just as well.

  Hugo sat on the straw to hang his legs out above the clacking wheels. Hunger gnawed at him, but Hugo knew how to push that aside.

  Germany looked freshly deceased. Hugo had seen corpses like this, flush and supple. Germany lay green in forests and hillocks, glowing a healthy jade, streams and rivers unhindered; then the train rolled through villages and towns. Most had been bombarded into grisly ruin, macabre friezes of life interrupted like insects in amber. Explosions had knocked down most buildings, cut others in half; bathtubs hung dizzily by their plumbing, kitchens carved down the middle showed calendars tacked to walls and dishes on shelves. Bared wood frames stripped of their clapboard or bricks suggested bones. Townsfolk moved through the wreckage as if nothing were awry. They carried sacks and tools and held children’s hands, bicycled through cleared lanes, held parasols against the end-of-summer sun, old men took their ease on benches near the ruins of their favorite shops.

  Chapter 14

  Vince

  “Nein,” the young woman said, then added in English, “Thank you.” She got to her small feet to join a quiet group near the open door.

  The train clattered past another nameless hamlet. Thatched huts lined a square where farmers sold vegetables from wagons without horses. Then the village was gone, receded among fields ungrazed by cattle or goats, just old men threshing to clear the scrub.

  Vince tucked his journal into his pack, the pencil into his coat, and rested against the wall. Hugo hadn’t spoken to him or moved from the car’s doorway since the train left Fulda. Vince had approached a dozen Jews. Not one was impolite, but none would speak to him. Some began, but the instant he put pencil to paper they shook their heads and stopped; the survivors didn’t want to become whatever his pencil would make them, as small as words.

  The afternoon wore on, the landscape shifted between lush vistas and ruined towns. Vince kept his seat on the straw and considered that he, too, was on his way to Palestine.

  He awoke from a rocking doze as the brakes of the locomotive wailed. The Jews shifted about for their luggage and coats, still wordless. In his notebook, Vince scribbled that if he’d ever been as sad as these people had been for so long, he might be as silent as them.

  The train shunted to a stop. Hugo jumped down first; some of the men jumped off with him.

  Vince waited to be the last out of the car. The locomotive took on water from a tower while the conductor walked the short length of his engine and couplings. The refugees stretched their legs around the platform and station house; a mile away, a spire without a cross presided over an undamaged town. The immigrants dug into paper sacks for their evening meal or scuttled off to a weedy patch to relieve themselves. Several disappeared between the cars, going to the other side of their train, where Hugo had gone. Vince followed.

  On a parallel track, a second train idled. The locomotive panted steam, pointed north. American soldiers guarded five passenger cars that had iron bars welded across the windows. Chains and locks sealed every door. Stubbly faces peered out.

  Hugo walked at the head of thirty who’d followed him. They closed in on the train. A trooper told them to stay back. Vince hurried to the refugees to translate. He assured the GI that everything was okay.

  “I’m an American, private. Who’s on the train? Who’re you guarding?”

  “We got a hundred krauts. Taking them to Nuremberg for trial.”

  Hugo asked, “What did he say?”

  “It’s a train of war criminals.”

  Hugo backed away. Four more GIs stepped into a line. Twenty paces back, the Jews clotted around Hugo, who picked up the first rock.

  The stone sailed high over Vince. In moments, all the Jews flung rocks, concrete and busted bricks, anything they could find on the ground to heave. Windows on the train broke behind the bars, making the Nazis recoil. One of the five GIs readied his rifle. In the din, with debris sailing over his head, Vince rushed between the Jews and the raised gun. “They’re Jews from the camps! Don’t hurt them!”

  The soldier lowered his gun. Vince ran at Hugo. “Stop, stop!”

  Hugo cocked a stone.

  Vince yelled again, “Stop!”

  Hugo lowered the rock; the others did the same. Inside the train, some of the SS men cursed the Jews loud enough to be heard.

  Hugo held his rock out to Vince. “You throw it.”

  “No.”

  Hugo urged the rock at Vince. “Don’t write it down. Don’t report. Just throw it.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because what those animals did will last in the world for a thousand years. You think this isn’t your rock to throw. You’re wrong.”

  Hugo pushed the stone into Vince’s side.

  “Why did you come, Vince? Just to watch what the Jews do, listen to what we say? Is that all? You can follow us until we drop. Talk to us until we’re hoarse. Write it all down. And still, you’ll never know.”

  Hugo held out the stone as if he might drop it.

  “If you’re afraid, I won’t blame you.”

  Vince’s palm was up before he’d fully thought it through. Hugo released the stone into his hand. “Throw it.”

  Vince took a long stride; the stone flew past a broken window, into the car to make the war criminals scatter. The same soldier lifted his gun again, at Vince.

  Walking away, crossing the couplings to their own train, the Jews patted, not Vince, on the back but Hugo for making him do it.

  Chapter 15

  Rivkah

  October 9

  Kibbutz Massuot Yitzhak

  Palestine

  Rivkah pulled hard on the bar, but the knee-high boulder refused to pry loose. Ben Joseph added his small muscles to the lever to no avail. Rivkah quit trying and let the bar drop, missing Ben Joseph’s toes.

  Ben Joseph sat on the rock and kicked his heels against it. At fifteen, the boy needed his first shave. Posed against the windswept view, his features hinted at a handsome but small man one day. Ben Joseph had been an orphan in Budapest, both parents were lost to Auschwitz. A wealthy couple scooped him out of the ghetto without knowing his name; they had money and no children of their own. They hadn’t tried to make him their child, just saved him, sent him to Palestine, and left it at that. He arrived three months ago.

  All sixty pioneers did the same work; in teams, they wrestled limestone chunks out of the bleak ground to build a wall around themselves. A mule trudged before a cart to haul the dislodged rocks downhill to where the biggest boys stacked them. Mrs. Pappel held the mule’s halter, walking it back and forth.

 
; The longer Mrs. Pappel lived in Palestine, the more ancient she became and the younger. Her hair had lengthened into a twined cord down her back, her shape pared down; she moved with a queenly grace among the young kibbutzniks. In the light of campfires, she told stories in English of the great heroines from the Old Testament: beautiful Ester who saved the Jews from Haman, Judith who cut off the head of Holofernes, Deborah standing against a horde of Canaanites. Whatever work she did for the Haganah, she continued in secret. She loved the settlement’s children and the land, taking on the characters of both.

  At the end of their first tiring day of Massuot Yitzhak, Rivkah and Mrs. Pappel sat outside the completed stone barrier. Inside the ring, in the middle of six teepees, the young pioneers assembled around a bonfire. A rabbi from Jerusalem had brought a Torah scroll for the new settlement. He was younger than Mrs. Pappel but had a face of furrows. He’d brought tallits for the men; they sat around him draped in snowy cloth and fringes while he intoned from the scroll. The girls stood apart, close enough to listen and be tinged by the fire.

  The rabbi called for responses in his reading; the haverim, the settlers, lifted their voices into the night along with the glitter of rising sparks. All the youths inside the stone wall had survived the camps and pogroms. Rivkah was an elder among them at twenty-four.

  The first pinpoints of stars winked on the horizon. The rabbi ran a finger across the scroll by the fire’s glow while the Jews sat on the hard ground. The tents flickered on the rim of the light and the wall was built of stones; the scene could have been two thousand years old.

  Palestine turned vast under the stars. Kfar Etzion to the south glimmered; several Arab villages cast only patchy light. The rabbi told the gathered of Massuot Yitzhak, this was once the land of Israelite kings and the Maccabees, these were the hills where David hid from Saul. Thick forests once shaded these slopes, dark soil made them fertile. God denied Moses entry, telling him you shall see the land at a distance but you shall not go there. During the long exile of the Jews, the trees were cut, the soil weathered off the hills; this became an abandoned place, a land with no people. In the center of the bonfire, a log shifted and a shower of embers leaped to join the stars.

  Out in the gloom, a sound shuffled, like a broom. Then came another. The rabbi and his young congregation seemed unaware. Mrs. Pappel freed her hand from Rivkah’s.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Pappel shot to her feet. Rivkah joined her. Out past the shadows of the bonfire, a camel grunted.

  Slowly the beast ambled into the flickering light, head high. A large Arab rider filled the saddle.

  The sixty young Jews spun on the intruder, with no notion what to do. The rabbi held out both arms, calling for everyone to be still.

  The camel took a few more ambling strides, then pulled up at the foot of the new wall.

  The Arab and the rabbi seemed fearless, locked on each other like old enemies. Both were bearded. The Arab rode taller than the flames. He wore a flowing white headdress banded by a black cord. An ebon cape framed his dark loose robes. Moving their heads as one, the rider and camel surveyed the wall, the young people, and the hilltop that yesterday was bare. This, too, could have been thousands of years old, the gulf between peoples.

  The Arab drew from his saddle a rifle.

  The settlers recoiled. They’d left their own weapons beside the tents; some boys ran for their guns. Ben Joseph surged in front of the rabbi to protect him. Mrs. Pappel stepped between Rivkah and the armed rider.

  The Arab aimed the gun up into the night and fired a round. The crack lingered in the hills. He seemed not to have ridden up the hill for any lethal purpose, just to create this moment, to remind the Jews that this was not a land without a people. Coolly, he watched from his high seat, rifle raised beside his head like a shepherd’s crook.

  Before any of the settlers could rush back to the wall with their own weapons, the caped rider clicked his tongue. His camel wheeled into the night, slapping its wide feet down the rocky hillside.

  Chapter 16

  Vince

  October 10

  UN Relief and Rehabilitation Center

  Leipheim

  Vince had many pencils. He gave one to a Jew who flung himself at the long hallway wall.

  Finding a spot of blank plaster, the Jew printed his name and today’s date, his hometown, and his destination: Palestine. Others from the Buchenwald train pressed behind him, putting their hands to his shoulders and back, lobbying to be next for the pencil.

  Top to bottom, the wall had been scrawled over by thousands of refugees passing through the UN displaced persons center in Leipheim, on the hope that some loved one might see or that they themselves might spot a name. Handwriting covered the staircases, too, for there were multitudes adrift.

  Hugo stood in line beneath a sign that read DP Registration. Vince stepped out of the clogged hall to join him. Vince asked, “Did you look?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t see anyone have any luck.”

  “We’ve used up our luck.”

  In line behind Vince, a man tapped him on the shoulder. He was dressed like Hugo, in plain shirt, loose trousers, scuffed shoes, wool cap, and suspenders.

  “Pardon,” he said in English, “you are the American?”

  “What can I do for you?”

  From a back pocket the man dug a grubby notebook; he did this with haste, to show Vince he would be quick about his need and not wasteful of an American’s time. Vince raised a palm to say it was alright.

  The booklet was filled with scratches, like the hallway. “Do you know someone.” The Jew paused, then uttered a name, a relative in Chicago. Vince shook his head. The man found more in his booklet to ask after, in California and “Neff York.” Vince repeated a gentle “No” to each.

  With the man out of earshot, Hugo said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For not telling him he was a fool.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “You’re sounding less like a reporter all the time.”

  The line led to stairs that descended to a crowded basement. Some rooms served as trade schools for sewing and shoe repair. In other spaces, nurses took quick temperatures and asked perfunctory questions about diseases and medical conditions.

  At the end of the line, U.S. soldiers with clipboards staffed three card tables. In German, Polish, and English, the GIs inquired of each refugee his or her name, then “last permanent residence as of January 1, 1938,” “desired destination,” “usual occupation or profession,” “languages spoken in order of fluency,” and “claimed nationality.”

  Hugo’s turn came. Suddenly, he whirled around, grinning. “Bitte. Geh du zuerst.” Please. You go first.

  Hugo slipped behind Vince while the GI, with hundreds to process, tapped his pen on the clipboard. Vince stepped up to let the GI survey him in his olive drab jacket, tunic, and pants. He asked in English, “Why’re you dressed like an American soldier?”

  Vince affected a German accent. “I vass giffen by Americans.” The GI had no time for suspicion. Vince gave his real name, Vincenz Haas. He even claimed his 1938 residence as “Neff York” and his profession as “Schriftsteller,” writer.

  At the question of “claimed nationality,” he got a poke in the back from Hugo. Vince answered the way Hugo dared him.

  “Jew.”

  The soldier presented Vince a travel visa and flimsy ID booklet filled in with his name, answers, and a refugee number. Vince stepped out of the room, back to the stairwell. He trudged up the steps with a cluster of immigrants who held their new documents like gifts. Tonight, when their train crossed out of Germany into the American sector of Austria, into Switzerland, then France, they would present their documents at every border. The survivors left the building, past the wall of ten thousand n
ames, moved to tears. This was their first time in years, after being homeless and stateless, tattooed and anonymous, that they saw the return of their identity, even at its merest beginning.

  In the courtyard, spotlights turned away the dark. The Buchenwald refugees meandered in a slight chill; food was brought out to them so they could continue on their way.

  Hugo emerged from the processing center. He held out his booklet to Vince and reached for Vince’s. “Let me see yours.”

  Vince handed over the little folder. Examining it, Hugo lifted his chin proudly. He returned the booklet to Vince.

  “Less and less like a reporter.”

  Chapter 17

  Hugo

  The train barreled through the valleys of Austria; a three-quarters moon dodged among mountain peaks, lighting the Jews in pearlescent flashes. They said little to each other, still emotional over their ID booklets, showing their papers in the uneven light.

  Around midnight, nearing the Swiss border, the locomotive blew its lonely whistle. The moon brightened a landscape of fir trees and slopes so sheer they blocked the stars.

  At the border, the train edged to a halt. No one jumped down; Swiss guards in berets and ponchos waited on the platform. The guards entered the cargo cars to check documents by lantern light. Hugo showed his visa and refugee booklet. The Swiss soldier smiled in the yellow warmth of his lamp, as he did for each of the Jews, and said Willkommen. More guards brought baskets of crescent rolls; the refugees tucked the breads into their pockets.