CHAPTER 5
When they returned to Tel Aviv, Mendel was so happy that Katja could not help but be swept up in the whirlwind of his joy. They were to be married in three months, and it seemed that they had a continuously growing list of things to do. And immediately after the wedding, Mendel was graduating from law school. The couple spent an afternoon writing invitations to all of their friends that did not live on the kibbutz. Katja called Rachel to invite her and her female partner to the wedding.
“I’m still not ready to tell everyone that I’m a lesbian,” Rachel said. “I think it’s best that I come alone.”
“You can do whatever you want to do, but Mendel and I would welcome Sandy if you decided to bring her with you,” Katja said.
“I don’t think I will, not yet,” Rachel said. “Shana would be so ashamed. And when I leave to go back home, Shana would have to face that embarrassment every day. How would she ever explain it to her husband, and as the baby grew up, everyone would whisper that the child’s aunt was a lesbian. No, I think I should come alone.”
Katja discussed the situation with Mendel. He agreed that he would readily accept Rachel’s lover, but he felt they had to accept Rachel’s decision. If she chose to come alone, then they would respect her choice.
The couple found an apartment halfway between Mendel’s office and Katja’s job. Her lease was up, and he found a tenant to sublet his previous apartment. Right after the wedding, they would move into their new home.
At night, they went to dinner together followed by long walks and heartfelt talks. But they still had not made love. Mendel did not initiate, and Katja was not sure what to do, so she did nothing.
It was not that Mendel didn’t want to take Katja in his arms and make passionate love to her—he did. In fact, every night before he fell asleep, he thought about holding her close to him. And it was not that Mendel was a virgin because he wasn’t. He’d had a couple of flings with other women he’d met at school, during the time when Katja was engaged to Elan. But neither of the other women he’d courted had meant to him what Katja meant to him. He loved Katja. He wanted everything to be right between them. He was afraid to offend her. He didn’t want to make a mistake.
Sometimes he chastised himself for being too careful. Other times he felt pangs of fear travel through him when he thought about how she might be offended if he pushed her too fast or too hard. So he decided to have patience. Mendel would wait until their wedding night and meanwhile be satisfied with the precious kiss that she gave him every evening when they said goodbye. Mendel smiled to himself at how ridiculously in love he was. He never told Kat, but Mendel didn’t wash his face after Kat kissed him until the next morning. He wanted to sleep through the night holding on to the feeling of the warmth of her lips on his.
One afternoon, Katja left her apartment in a rush. She’d gotten up late and forgot to put her reading glasses in her purse. When she got to work everything was blurry, making it impossible to concentrate on her job. She would have asked her boss for permission to go home and get her glasses, but he was in a meeting until late afternoon and had left a pile of work on her desk with a note that said the work must be finished before she left for the day.
Not only had she forgotten her glasses, but also it was her special time of the month, and she was overly emotional. Looking at the papers on her desk and the typewriter beside them, she knew that even with her glasses, she would have to be at work until well after seven that evening to finish everything.
Her lower stomach was cramping, and she felt bloated. Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes. Katja buried her head in her hand. She’d developed a slight headache from trying to focus without her glasses. Then she gazed at the telephone on her desk. Mendel… Thank God for Mendel. She picked up the receiver and dialed.
“Mendel?”
“Hi, sweetheart.”
His kindness, accompanied by her overly sensitive emotions, made her start weeping.
“What’s wrong, Kat?” His voice was soft but filled with concern.
She began to tell him about her glasses, the paperwork on her desk, her stomachache, her headache, and how overwhelmed she was feeling.
“Shh, Kat. It’s okay. I’ll come by the office and get your key. Then I’ll pick up your glasses, a couple of aspirins, and some lunch for you so that you don’t take the pills on an empty stomach. Do you think you should see a doctor?”
“No, it’s just something natural. I get it every month. It’s always bad, but this month, with forgetting my glasses, all this work, and the list of things to do for the wedding…”
“You mean, like, your womanly situation?”
“Yes, exactly. I am having my period.” Katja blushed, but somehow she could tell Mendel anything. He knew her so well. She had never been able to talk about things like this with Elan.
“I’m glad that’s all it is,” he said.
She smiled to herself. God bless Mendel. He understood everything.
“But even with my glasses, I’ll never get all this work done. My boss left a whole desk filled with papers that he wants me to type,” Katja said, “and he left me here all alone with no one else to help me.”
“I can type,” Mendel said. “I’ll stay and help you.”
“Type? Really, Mendel?”
“For you, Kat? Anything—everything—always and forever. I’ll be right over.”
She hung up the phone and sat back in her chair. What a lucky woman she was to have a man like Mendel. But why the hell couldn’t she feel the same passion for him that she felt for Elan? What was it that made her go crazy over Elan? Damn him, damn Elan to hell.
Mendel arrived in less than a half hour with a cup of hot tea.
“Drink this, and I’ll go pick up your glasses,” he said, handing her the paper cup.
She sipped the tea. It warmed her throat, and the sweetness soothed her nerves, gently calming her stomach cramps. Mendel always knew what to do—always.
Mendel arrived back at Katja’s office a half hour later with a quart of chicken soup, a sleeve of crackers, two aspirins, and Katja’s glasses.
While Katja ate, Mendel began typing the documents on her desk. He asked for instructions and then surprised Katja with his efficient typing. Although he was not nearly as fast as she was, his accuracy made up for the time it took him to finish a page. He sat at the desk opposite hers where there was another typewriter. Everyone else was in the meeting. They were alone in the office, and the only sound was the clip clop of the typewriter.
“I feel bad that you are sitting here doing my work. I feel guilty about you spending your whole afternoon taking care of me.”
“I love taking care of you, Kat. I want to spend the rest of my life taking care of you. Now eat, please, and there’s no need to rush. We’ll finish this work together,” Mendel said.
“Shouldn’t you be studying for the bar exam?”
“I’ll get it all done.”
“When?”
“Whenever I get it done. I don’t have anything pressing right now. Whatever work I have to do can wait until tomorrow. You know the Yiddish saying, ‘If I don’t get there tonight, I’ll get there tomorrow.’” He smiled and winked at her. She had to laugh.
But Mendel knew that after they had dinner together and Katja was tucked warm and comfortable into her bed, he would go back to his apartment and stay up at least half the night to finish his own work. He would never tell that to Katja. She would have forced him to go home and study. But being around Katja made him happy, and anything he could do to help her gave him greater pleasure than he’d ever experienced. It fulfilled him.
It was six o’clock when Mendel rolled the last piece of paper out of the typewriter. “I think we’re done?”
“I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without you,” Katja said.
“How do you feel?”
“A lot better.”
“Now let’s get you home. I’ll go out and pick up some fo
od. You can take a hot bath while I’m gone. When I get back, we’ll have a light dinner, and then it’s off to bed with you, my love.”
“Mendel…”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Thank you.”
“You never have to thank me.”
CHAPTER 6
Katja drove to the kibbutz the week before the wedding, to make sure that everything was in order. It was a warm day for the beginning of February. Of course, she knew that her mother would have taken care of everything. Everything would have been done perfectly, but she wanted to spend a little extra time with her parents. Her boss was generous and gave her plenty of time off—a full month. Mendel was to arrive the day before the wedding. After the wedding, they were going to take a few days and go to the sea, just to relax and soak up the sun.
For Katja, this precious week of being home at the kibbutz was like being a child again. She loved the familiar smells of the food. She spent time helping Shana and her mother with the children. One evening, she took a long walk with her father, and he told her that he believed she’d made a good choice in Mendel.
On the outside, everything seemed perfect. But buried deep within her heart, Katja still had so many doubts. The issue of her Nazi birth parents still lingered in her mind. She could not shake off the vision of Helga, the blonde woman she didn’t know who had given birth to her. She could not free her thoughts of Helga crying and apologizing to her. And although she’d never met her birth father, in her mind’s eye she saw him as a sadistic Nazi, a killer of Jews.
She had nightmares where she could see her birth father forcing Jews into gas chambers in an extermination camp. In her night terrors, he was wearing a black hat with a death’s head symbol and standing over Zofia and Isaac, ordering them to their deaths. Every time she had one of these dreams, she would stay awake the remainder of the night just trying to catch her breath. When Mendel arrived at the kibbutz, she would ask him one more time if he was sure that he wanted to marry her—sure that he wanted her as the mother of his children.
At one point, she considered sending a letter to Helga Haswell telling her that she was getting married. She read somewhere that if she could forgive her birth mother, then all of the bad feelings toward Helga might disappear. Katja was trying. She wanted to forgive Helga, and sometimes she was able to find forgiveness when she prayed, sometimes but not always. She just wished that she could go back to the way she felt when she believed that Zofia and Isaac were her birth parents. Katja had never realized how blessed she was until she lost that security. As of yet, she had not sent any letters to Helga. Maybe someday she would but not today.
Then of course, there was Elan. Why did she still think about Elan? He’d hurt her and turned away from her and forgot every promise he’d ever made to her. He’d forgotten how he’d vowed to love her until his dying day. When he left, he made her feel as if she did not belong anywhere, that all of her life spent as a Jew was meaningless. She’d felt as if her entire life was a lie.
But Mendel, dear Mendel, he’d tried to make her see that where she was born and who her birth parents were, meant nothing. He’d told her over and over that Isaac and Zofia were her parents, Israel was her home, and its people were her people. She had come to believe him. She needed to believe him. But still in the back of her thoughts, deep within her mind, she could not forget the truth.
Perhaps she needed to do something to make a difference in the world that would somehow prove she deserved to be a Jew, and that she deserved to live in Israel. She pondered that thought for a while, but she couldn’t come up with any ideas of what to do or how to do it. Katja had never been very ambitious. She’d always assumed she would be a wife and mother, and that would be enough. Now she could not help but feel that she should do something…something to atone for the atrocities committed by her father.
Mendel arrived the day before the wedding carrying a huge bouquet of blush roses and a big smile. He knocked on the door to Katja’s room. It was early in the morning, and she hadn’t gotten out of bed yet. The knock awakened her, and she opened the door with her blonde curls strewn about her head and her lovely blue eyes still soft with sleep. Mendel handed her the flowers.
“One more day and you’ll be Katja Zaltstein, my wife!”
“I know. It’s exciting.” She smiled. “Come in.”
“Exciting! It’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.” He leaned over and gently kissed her.
“Mendel, sit.” Katja motioned to the bed. He sat down, and a worried look came over his face. “I have to ask you one more time. With all that you know about my background, are you sure that this is what you want?”
“I have never been surer of anything in my life,” he said, taking her hand and kissing the palm. “I love you, Kat. I’ve told you a million times. I loved you since we were kids, and I’ll love you with my dying breath. Now just give me a lifetime to prove it to you.”
She looked into those deep-green eyes. Today they did not sparkle with gold. Instead, they looked like deep pools of water.
“I mean it, Kat. Don’t change your mind. Please.”
She leaned over and kissed him gently and then more passionately. He put his arms around her, and she melted into his arms. They fell back onto her bed, and he began kissing her neck. His lips moved down to the edge of her bra. Katja sighed.
“One more night. Let’s wait,” he whispered, “I don’t want to ruin our wedding night.”
She smiled at him and ran her fingers along the side of his cheek.
“I want to make it special. Our wedding night will be the greatest night of our lives,” he said.
CHAPTER 7
One day before the day of the wedding, the sky opened, and torrents of rain nourished the dry lands of Israel. Katja sat up and gazed out the window of her room. She watched the rainfall in angles cascading down from the sky. Tomorrow she would get married, and her life would change forever. She would be joined in the eyes of God to her best friend, a man she’d known as long as she could remember. He was good, kind, and caring. So why the hell was she still thinking about Elan?
She thought that her broken heart had mended, but it still had a small open sore. Thinking about Elan so close to her wedding day was a sin. Damn him. Could it be possible to hate and love someone at the same time?
There was a soft knock at the door. Katja got up from her bed, her long cotton nightgown trailing over her bare feet as she went to the door.
“Who is it?” Katja whispered.
“It’s me, sunshine.”
“Mom?”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course, you must be soaked.” Katja opened the door, and Zofia entered. “Come sit on my bed.”
They sat down on the bed and looked at each other.
“I’m very happy today,” Zofia said. “Mendel will be good to you. He loves you.”
“I know. He is my best friend.”
“You love him, don’t you, sunshine?” Zofia asked, rubbing her daughter’s shoulder.
“I do, I just…”
“What? Elan?”
“How did you know?”
“A mother always knows her own child. Your heart is as close to me as my own. I feel what you feel.”
“I’m scared, Mama. I’m afraid I will never completely get over Elan.”
“You won’t, believe me. But I have to tell you something, something I have meant to tell you for a very long time.”
“Not more secrets, Mom, please…”
“Only one, my sunshine. Listen… Once when I was very young, I thought I was in love with a man who was much older than I was. He broke my heart. I had a child by him, but he never knew, not that I think he would have cared. But when the war broke out, and we were taken to the ghetto, my little girl was with us. I was living with two friends, two women—lesbians. Those were the women I told you about, the seamstress, Fruma, and her lover, Gitel. They were very kind to me. They loved my daughter as if she
were their own.”
“I remember you promising to tell me about this when we went to meet my birth mother. Is it true then? Do I have a sister?”
“Yes, you do. I’ve been avoiding talking to you about her. But now I want you to know. You have a sister. Her name is Eidel.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Yes, she is living with a very good friend of mine. She doesn’t know that I am her mother.
“When we were in the ghetto, Eidel was in danger. I was afraid that she would die of disease or be murdered if we were sent to a camp. Fruma and Gitel were distraught as well.
Finally, Fruma found a solution. She found a man who worked with the black market. I still remember his name, would you believe it? After all these years, I still remember his name, Karl Abdenstern. This man, Karl, worked in the black market. At night, he climbed out of the ghetto to buy and sell goods. People needed extra food, extra things, and this man got what he could and brought it back to sell in the ghetto.
“One night Fruma arranged for Karl, to sneak Eidel out and bring her to my friend Helen. Helen agreed to take Eidel and raise her as a Gentile, as her own daughter. This man, Karl, did this at great risk to himself, and he saved my daughter’s life.
“After the war, I went looking for Eidel. I went to see my friend Helen. When I got there, I saw Eidel. She was living as Helen’s child. It was the only home Eidel ever knew. Helen had renamed her. She called her Ellen. It hurt me, but I could not take Eidel away from the life she knew. She was happy, so happy, and she believed that Helen was her birth mother. It was the hardest thing I ever did, but I had to leave her behind. I did it because I loved her, and it was best for her.”
“Why, Mom, why are there so many secrets, so many lies?”
“The war, the Nazis—we could not always tell the truth. I know it’s hard for you to understand.”
“Yes, Mother, it is. It’s very hard for me.”
“I know, and I can’t explain it to you. You want to know why I kept the information about your birth from you and why I waited so long to tell you that you have a sister.”
To Be An Israeli: The Fourth Book in the All My Love, Detrick series Page 3