by Jay Parini
I shrugged. “He’s young. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
“Young is nothing. I can tell you, he was never like this before.”
“He’s like my brother,” I said. “He used to cross swords with my mother. It went on for years.”
“But this is unlike José. There was never a boy more hopeful. He enjoyed his schoolwork, was always building things with Arkady. They talked every night about machines. And they took walks together and learned about the trees, the animals—I can’t do that, you see. I don’t know about anything that interests him.”
Of course she was right that the problem was not José’s youth. He was not “young” but angry, which, given the circumstances, was an honest response. Henny Gurland wanted me to say, “José will be all right.” Maybe he would be, who knows? If so, he was one of the fortunate ones.
When we joined the others, Benjamin was telling José not to worry about the Spanish police. “They are a different breed,” he was saying. “They are not anti-Semitic.”
“Franco is a bully,” Henny Gurland muttered.
“He doesn’t control everyone in Spain,” I said.
“Believe me, the Spanish are worse than the French,” Frau Gurland continued. “They hate foreigners, and they make no bones about it. The French, as you know, at least pretend to admire foreigners.”
“They hated us,” said José. “The teachers especially. They told me not to speak in class because of my accent. The bitches were afraid I would corrupt the ears of the other children.”
Old Benjamin spoke loudly: “They are too proud, the French, but I have always adored them. Paris, you know, was the capital of the nineteenth century. In this century, of course, New York is the capital.”
“But you are a Berliner,” I said. “Berliners are the most sophisticated people in the world.”
“There are no Berliners,” he said. “You are thinking of the Jews in Berlin, or the Russians. The Russians are well-educated and tolerant. The White Russians, that is. There is more Russian literature than German literature coming out of Berlin. It is a great pity, you know. Moscow should have been the capital of the twentieth century.”
It seemed that afternoon tea-chat had resumed. “Have you been to Moscow, Dr. Benjamin?” I asked.
He seemed to blush when I said this. “I visited there once, yes. An intolerable place, I’m afraid. The Bolsheviks have ruined everything, including their own revolution.”
“You are not a Marxist, I gather.”
“I am nothing.”
“You are a writer,” Henny Gurland said, “a famous critic.”
“There is no such thing as a famous critic,” he replied. “I am a critic, yes. Rather, I was a critic. Now I am, well—a Jew in flight.”
* * *
—
Toward noon, we arrived at a plateau with startling views of the Pyrenees, range after range in darkening shades of blue. The precipitous drop behind us plunged toward the valley, with villages along the French border clustering among the vineyards and dry stubble-fields.
A falcon hung in the wind above us, with a steady eye.
“Don’t worry,” I said to Benjamin, who studied the bird rather anxiously. “It’s not a vulture.”
“Any carrion will do in a pinch,” he said. “You see why the ancient Greeks placed such a high premium on burial. One does not want to be picked apart by birds.”
“The Indians in Mexico want that to happen,” said José. “The old men climb a hill and expose themselves to the elements. They let the birds dismember their bodies. I wouldn’t mind that.”
“I hope they’re dead when the birds begin,” I said.
“Very dead,” José said.
“Where did you hear about that, José?” his mother asked.
“Father told me.” He said it as if to imply, How else would I know anything?
Old Benjamin said, “I used to be very keen on Aztec culture when I was a boy.”
“The Aztec priests used to kill a thousand people a week,” said José. “They used knives with stone blades to dig out the hearts, and then they offered them to Huitzilopochtli. That was their sun god.”
“They were trying to keep the world from coming to an end,” said Benjamin. “They believed their god required this terrible sacrifice.”
“They were crazy,” said Henny Gurland.
“They were no more misguided than many other cultures,” Old Benjamin maintained.
Everyone sat in silence as I broke off bits of the bread I had purchased two days before with counterfeit food stamps. I smeared the bread with a soft cheese Mayor Azéma had given me, and passed it around. Each of us had one small tomato as well.
“May I serve myself, Frau Fittko?” asked Benjamin.
I nodded. His courtliness was so profoundly out of step with the times.
“We have a long way to go, don’t we?” he asked.
“You will be in Spain today,” I said, “if we press on.”
“If we’re not caught by the Nazis, you mean,” José said.
“It is a good day for climbing, José,” Benjamin said. “And we are lucky to have one another for company, wouldn’t you say?”
José merely grunted. He obviously did not feel lucky to have our company. “It’s going to rain,” he said. “I can smell it.”
“The wind is strong,” I said, “and it may just keep the clouds from covering us.”
“Climbers in the Alps are often trapped by snowstorms, even in late spring,” he said.
“He is so encouraging,” said his mother.
This prompted in Old Benjamin a long reminiscence of a walking tour he’d taken in Switzerland some decades before with a woman who later became his fiancée. He told us some hilarious story about how he had accidentally got himself engaged to this woman he barely knew.
José, who had been listening to Old Benjamin with rapt attention, wondered, “But you did marry someone?”
“Yes, and that was a mistake, too.”
José smiled wryly, and Benjamin explained that his former wife and son were now safely in London, and that he hoped to see them again after the war. “The boy is about your age,” he said to José.
The sky was growing darker by the second. “We must move on now,” I said.
We would have to climb through steep, rough terrain in the next hour or so. The map showed a sharp turn ahead along a ridge, with a sheer drop on one side; to make things worse, the main route ran perilously close to the Lister at just this point, so absolute silence must be maintained.
On subsequent trips, when I knew this route by heart, I could slip across the Pyrenees in half a day. But this was my first time, and I was coaxing along a very sick man. Sometimes Old Benjamin had to climb on all fours, digging his absurdly inappropriate shoes into the sides of the mountain, the tail of his jacket flapping.
“How are the blisters?” I asked.
“They’ve burst,” he said. “My stockings are soaked, but my feet are more comfortable now. Not a bad trade-off.”
We’d been climbing again for about twenty minutes when it began to hail: white pellets thrashing the side of the mountain, popping in the path and melting, making the way slippery. I watched Benjamin duck forward, as if trying to avoid the pelting, teetering on the brink of the path.
“Be careful,” I whispered, just as Benjamin lost his footing. His feet pawed at the ground before he fell into the mud. José and I rushed to help him.
“I quite like the mud,” Benjamin said.
“We will rest for a few minutes,” I said, “until the hail stops.”
We pressed together beneath an overhanging ledge, and Benjamin began to chatter. At the slightest provocation, vast histories would spill from his lips. Now he said, “When I was a boy, my parents sent me to a country boarding school
called Haubinda, in Thüringen—a lovely place. There was a meadow behind the school, and in April it was always mud, mud, mud. The masters were strict but sensible. They understood that a boy and a puddle are two halves of some Platonic whole.”
I pointed to the ledge above us. “If the map is accurate, the route passes just overhead. Please be quiet now.”
Benjamin looked at me gravely. We sat for about ten minutes until the hailing was over, and the sun came out so intensely I had to shield my eyes.
We continued through a grassy stretch where the bleached bones of some large animal, probably a goat, lay strewn in the path. The eyeholes in the skull stared out, horrendous. I feared Old Benjamin would launch into a soliloquy about poor Yorick, but he restrained himself.
When the path curved toward the cliffside again, voices sounded above us. We flattened our backs against the wall and waited. Fifteen minutes passed. Then Benjamin stooped to his briefcase, and my heart quickened. Was he feeling faint? Was he going to get us caught by rooting for his medicine? To my astonishment, Benjamin, unfazed, slipped a book of Goethe’s poems from his briefcase. He leaned back against the limestone to read until the voices passed, fifteen minutes later; at one point, his lips moved silently. José watched him with fascination. He had doubtless never encountered anyone like Old Benjamin before.
We now hiked in single file, clinging to the side of the cliff. According to the map, one circled this convex wall of limestone for perhaps half an hour, then ascended through relatively easy terrain before making a final sharp ascent to the summit. I let Benjamin go first, with Henny Gurland and her son behind me. It seemed only right for him to set the pace, given the circumstances, though I planned to switch into the lead when we got safely through this particular stretch. We kept perhaps ten or twenty paces between us.
The accident happened in garish color. Benjamin suddenly began to lose his footing and veer away from the cliff. I watched in horror as he began to teeter toward the precipice, sway on the lip of the cavern, regain his balance, then waver again. Instinctively I lurched toward him, but I was too late. I was just in time to watch him skid down the steep cliffside, rolling and turning, upright part of the way, grabbing with his free hand for roots and branches.
He dropped about thirty yards and landed hard on a lower ledge, hitting a pine shrub that stopped him from pitching into the ravine. Had he missed that shrub, he’d still be falling now.
I didn’t dare call down to him, but I waved, and he—after a dreadful minute—lifted a hand in response.
“I’m going down,” I said.
José followed me.
Frau Gurland did not want her son to help, but she had no choice. I could not possibly rescue Benjamin without his assistance. We picked our way down the slope. Once, I caught my foot on a root and stumbled, skittering off the path. Only another root, which I caught in my hand, saved me from toppling à la Benjamin to the ledge below. José was a mountain goat, surefooted, taking my hand and pulling me back into the gully.
It took half an hour to reach Old Benjamin, who lay on his back, clutching his briefcase, staring at the sky. I could see a gash near one temple and blood dribbling to his jawbone. His jacket was torn, but he seemed otherwise undamaged.
“Dr. Benjamin, I presume,” I said.
A rueful smile dawned. “Thank you so much for risking your lives on my behalf,” he said. I guessed that he had spent the last twenty minutes or so thinking up that sentence. “But I must tell you at once that there is no point in trying to help me. I cannot go on.”
“That’s nonsense,” I said.
“It’s simply the truth. You see, my leg is badly damaged,” he said, reaching for his left knee.
“Is it broken?”
He groaned, his face contorted by the pain.
“Let me see it.” I felt his knee carefully, where he said it hurt. There did not seem to be a break. “It’s probably a ligament,” I said. “Let’s see if you can stand.”
“There is no point,” he said. “As you well know, I have a weak heart. My life is behind me. But you must take the manuscript, my book….It is much more important than I. Do you understand?” He saw that I did not understand. No manuscript could possibly be worth a human life. “I have friends in New York—you must send it on….” His breath seemed to run out, and he lay back exhausted.
“I’ll carry the book,” José said.
“Yes, we’ll take the book,” I said, “but we’re taking you, too.” There was no time to argue, with the sky darkening overhead and the light waning. We had to reach the summit within two hours for them to have a chance of crossing the border by nightfall.
Benjamin allowed us to raise him to his feet. “Ach!” he cried, not quite vertical on wobbly knees. “I’m afraid it’s no use. My left knee…”
I felt around the knee again, to make sure no bones were sticking out. “Can you put any weight on it?”
“No.”
“Please try, Dr. Benjamin!” I looked up toward the path, and Henny Gurland waved. I tried vainly to see if there were border guards on the cliffs above her.
Gradually, Benjamin let some weight settle onto his bad knee. He took one or two steps, then more.
“That’s good!” I said. “It’s not broken or you couldn’t possibly walk. You’ve probably twisted it.”
Old Benjamin squeezed his face into something that resembled a smile. “You are a remarkable woman, Frau Fittko,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his jacket to wipe his brow, now covered with mud and sweat. He had scratched his left ear, and there was still some blood dripping onto his collar.
Suddenly, a flash on the high cliff caught my eye. A bayonet? A soldier’s helmet?
“Anyone can see us here,” I said.
José and I shouldered Benjamin along the gully with extreme caution; to slip and tumble now, the three of us, into the abyss, would be too awful. At first, he leaned hard on us, but before long he was able to shift more weight onto the bad knee, which suggested to me that it could not have been hurt as badly as he imagined.
It took the better part of an hour to push, lift, and drag our reluctant cargo up the rain-soaked gully. By the time we reached the path, his knee had recovered much of its former stability. Though he walked from this point on with a limp and needed help on the roughest slopes, he was able to continue, stopping for a short breather whenever his chest tightened. As we approached the summit, his concentration became steadily more fiendish, his eyes plowing ahead, his breathing slow, methodical, calculated.
After what felt like an interminable climb along a bank thickened with ferns, we arrived at a small plateau—an island of high red pines with no underbrush. The trunks were mauve-colored, straight up and down, with the feathery branches interlocking overhead to cast a shadow on the ground.
Benjamin insisted that we sit for a moment. “I like it here so very much,” he said. “One almost expects Druids to come rushing through these trees!” His lips had turned a faint purple. I did not think it was to watch for Druids that he had stopped.
“The last ascent is just ahead,” I said. “We could have a bite to eat here, I suppose.”
“I’m hungry,” said José.
Henny Gurland said, “Remember, José, that you are only one person among four.”
“He is perfectly right to be hungry,” Old Benjamin said.
“Nobody asked you, for God’s sake,” Henny said. “Mind your business, for once.”
“I am sorry, but José is still growing. His body will be crying out for nourishment.”
“It’s all right, Mother,” José said, going toward her.
“Stay away from me,” she said, turning her back.
“We’re almost there, Henny,” I said.
José settled back onto his haunches.
“Yes, we’ll be free in Spain before dar
k,” said Benjamin. “It will be worth every dreadful step!”
I was relieved that this latest firestorm had passed so quickly, and I handed around the last crusts of bread and a bit of chocolate. There was one small, bruised tomato, which I gave to José. Only Henny Gurland refused to take any food.
“I don’t know why food tastes so good when it is scarce,” said Old Benjamin. “I used to notice this in the Alps, on walking tours. We would take a little cheese and bread, and it tasted so wonderful.”
It felt oddly safe in this wood, even cozy, especially when a stiff rain drew its curtain across the sky. Even Henny began to thaw, nibbling on a crust of bread.
“It’s not going to last,” I said, pointing to the sunlight in the distance behind us. “Just a sun shower.” I lay back on the pine floor, resting my head on my rucksack, enjoying the soft spray that moistened my face.
Unexpectedly, Benjamin began to sing an old Jewish song, or mumbled more than sang it. I had heard this song as a child, and now it sounded through the rain with a forgotten strength, a forgotten understanding and tenderness. It evoked the horror of what we were all fleeing from and gave a new life to something that had perished long ago. His chanting absorbed the tension in the air around us and created a shelter where we could rest and gather strength. Soon Henny Gurland’s lips began to move with his.
The rain, as I predicted, swept over the crest of the mountain and left a wake of brilliant late-afternoon light that glazed the elephant-colored rocks. Benjamin stopped singing. The air smelled fresh and clean and free.
We began our last ascent. The ridge was slippery and steep, and there was loose gravel everywhere amid clumps of jack pine. “One step at a time,” I said to the old man, who pulled with both hands on shrubs where that was possible. I stayed close to him. If he fell off the path here, it was all over. The drop was sheer, with no convenient ledges to catch a fall. Indeed, several times small boulders were dislodged by one or another of us, and we would all pause to watch and listen as they dropped loose strings of debris into the vast ravine.
Benjamin did not ask for a rest during the last quarter hour or so of our ascent. He was in a rage of some kind, hurling himself toward the top, his fists clenched, his chin jutting forward as if in defiance of gravity itself and the protestations of his ailing body.