She must have dozed for a few minutes. Footsteps, from behind the heavy door, woke her. She shrank herself into the shadows, uncertain whether to run or stay. The bolts slid back with a whine of unoiled metal, and a man in workers’ overalls emerged, his muffler high around his chin.
He had not yet seen her.
She uttered the traditional words of greeting. “May God save us.”
The man turned, startled. His watery blue eyes widened when her saw the dripping, wraithlike figure cowering in the shadows. He did not recognize her, changed as she was by her months of mountain hardship. But she knew him. He was Sava, a kindly old man who had worked beside her father. She said his name, and then her own.
As he realized who she was, he reached down and lifted her to him in an embrace. Relief at his kindness overwhelmed her and she began to weep. Sava scanned the street to be sure that no one observed them. With his arm still wrapped around her shaking shoulders, he steered her inside, closed the door, and bolted it again.
He took her to the janitors’ dressing room and wrapped her in his own coat. He poured fresh coffee from the džezva. When she could find her voice, she told him of her exile from the Partisan unit. When she came to Ina’s death she could not go on. Sava placed his arm around her shoulders and rocked her gently.
“Can you help me,” she said at last. “If not, then please, deliver me to the Ustashe now, because I can’t run anymore.”
Sava regarded her for a moment without saying anything. Then he rose and took her hand. He led her out of the ministry, locking the door behind him. They walked in silence for one block, two. When they reached the National Museum, Sava led her to the porters’ entrance and motioned her to wait on a bench inside an alcove near the door.
He was gone a long time. Lola could hear people beginning to move around the building. She began to wonder if Sava had deserted her there. But exhaustion and grief had made her apathetic. She could no longer take any action to save herself. So she sat and she waited.
When Sava reappeared, there was a tall gentleman beside him. The man was middle-aged and very well dressed, with a crimson fez set atop dark hair streaked with silver. There was something a little familiar about him, but Lola could not think where they might have met. Sava took her hand and pressed it reassuringly. Then he was gone. The tall man beckoned Lola to follow him.
They left the building. He ushered her into the backseat of a small car, signaling that she should lie down on the floor. Only when he had started the motor and pulled out from the curb did he speak. His accent was refined, his voice gentle as he questioned her about where she had been and what she had done.
They had not driven any great distance when he stopped the car and got out, telling Lola to stay where she was. He was gone just a few minutes. When he came back, he handed Lola a chador. Then, he motioned her urgently to stay down.
“May God save us, effendi!”
He exchanged pleasantries with the passing neighbor, pretending to search for something in the car’s trunk. When the man turned the corner, he opened the rear door and gestured for Lola to follow. She pulled the chador across her face and kept her eyes down, as she had seen the modest Muslim women do. Inside the building, he rapped sharply on the door, and it opened at once.
His wife was standing just inside, waiting. Lola looked up and recognized her. It was the young wife who had given her coffee when she came to collect the laundry. Stela showed no sign of remembering Lola, which was unsurprising given the great change in her appearance. The year had aged her. She was gaunt and sinewy, her hair cropped short like a boy’s.
Stela looked anxiously from Lola’s haggard face to her husband’s concerned one. He spoke to her in Albanian. Lola had no idea what was said, but she saw Stela’s eyes widen. He continued speaking, gently but urgently. Stela’s eyes filled, but she wiped them with a lace handkerchief and turned to Lola.
“You are welcome in our home,” she said. “My husband tells me you have suffered very much. Come now and wash, eat, rest. Later, when you have slept, we will talk about how best to keep you safe.” Serif looked at his wife with a gentle expression of mingled tenderness and pride. Lola saw the glance, and how Stela colored as she returned it. To be loved like that, she thought, would be something indeed.
“I must return to the museum now,” he said. “I will see you this evening. My wife will take good care of you.”
The feel of hot water and the fragrant scent of soap were luxuries that, to Lola, seemed to belong to another lifetime. Stela gave her steaming soup and fresh bread, and Lola tried her best to eat it slowly, although in her extreme hunger she could have picked up the bowl in both hands and drained it. When she was done, Stela led her to a small alcove room. There was a baby’s crib, and in it an infant napped. “This is my son, Habib, born last autumn,” she said. She indicated a low sofa along the wall. “This can be your room, too.” Lola lay down, and even before Stela returned with a quilt, she had fallen into an exhausted sleep.
When she woke, it was like swimming up through deep water. The crib beside her was empty. She could hear soft voices, one anxious, one reassuring. Then a baby’s gentle mewling, quickly quieted. Lola saw that there were clothes set out for her on the bed. They were unfamiliar clothes, a full skirt such as an Albanian Muslim peasant woman might wear, and a large white scarf to cover her cropped hair that could also be pulled across the bridge of her nose to hide the lower part of her face. She knew that her own clothes, Partisan fatigues she’d sewn months ago from a piece of gray blanket, would have to be burned to ashes.
She dressed, struggling a little with the unfamiliar head scarf. When she entered the book-lined sitting room, Serif and Stela were sitting close together, deep in conversation. Serif had his son, a fine little fellow with a shock of dark hair, perched on his knee. His free hand was entwined with his wife’s. They looked up as Lola entered the room, and swiftly withdrew their hands. Lola knew that conservative Muslims felt it was inappropriate even for married couples to express physical affection in the presence of others.
Serif smiled at Lola kindly. “My, you make a fine peasant!” he said. “If you do not mind, the story we will tell to explain your presence here is that you are a maid sent by Stela’s family, to help her with the baby. You will pretend to know no Bosnian language at all, and that way you will not need to speak to anyone. In the presence of others, Stela and I will address you in Albanian. You just need to nod to anything we say. It will be best if you do not leave the apartment at all, so very few people will even know you are here. We will need to give you a Muslim name…does Leila suit you?”
“I don’t deserve this kindness,” she whispered. “That you, Muslims, should help a Jew—”
“Come now!” Serif said, realizing that she was about to cry. “Jews and Muslims are cousins, the descendants of Abraham. Your new name, do you know it means ‘evening’ both in Arabic, the language of our Holy Koran, and also in Hebrew, the language of your Torah?”
“I…I…we never learned Hebrew,” she stammered. “My family wasn’t religious.” Her parents had gone to the Jewish social club, but never to the synagogue. They tried to dress the children in new clothes at Hanukkah, in years when they could afford to, but apart from that, Lola knew very little of her faith.
“Well, it is a very beautiful and fascinating language,” said Serif. “The rabbi and I were collaborating on the translation of some texts, before—well, before this nightmare in which we find ourselves.” He rubbed a hand across his brow and sighed. “He was a good man, a very great scholar, and I mourn him.”
In the weeks that followed, Lola found herself adapting to the rhythms of a very different life. The fear of discovery waned with the passing of time, and before long, the calm, quiet routines of life as the Kamals’ baby nurse seemed more real to her than her former existence as a partisanka. She grew used to Stela’s soft, tentative voice calling her by her new name, Leila. She loved the baby almost from the first time she hel
d him. And she quickly grew fond of Stela, whose physical life in conservative Muslim families had been entirely domestic and private, but whose intellectual horizons, as the daughter and wife of learned people, had been expansive. At first, Lola was a little afraid of Serif, who was almost as old as her father. But his gentle, courtly manners soon put her at her ease. For a while, she couldn’t say what it was about him that was so different from other people she had known. And then one day, as he patiently drew her out on some subject or another, listening to her opinion as if it were worthy of his consideration, and then guiding her subtly to a fuller view of the issue, she realized what the difference was. Serif, the most learned person she had ever met, was also the only person who never let her feel the least bit stupid.
The Kamals’ day was organized around two things, prayer and learning. Five times a day, Stela would stop whatever she was doing, wash herself carefully, and apply perfume. Then she would spread a small silken rug that she kept only for prayer, and make the prostrations and recitations required by her faith. Lola could not understand the words, but she found the sonorous rhymes of the Arabic soothing.
In the evenings, Stela would work a piece of embroidery while Serif read aloud to her. At first, Lola had retired with Habib at that time, but they had invited her to stay and listen if she wished to. She would sit just a little outside of the circle of yellow light thrown by the lamp and hold Habib on her knee, rocking him gently. Serif chose lively histories or beautiful poems to read, and Lola increasingly found herself looking forward to those evening hours. If Habib fussed and she was obliged to leave the room with him, Serif either waited for her return or summarized whatever she had missed.
Sometimes, she woke in the night, sweaty from a dream in which the Germans’ dogs were pursuing her, or in which her little sister cried to her for help as they stumbled through dense woods. In other dreams, Isak and Ina disappeared, again and again, through the cracking ice. When she woke, she would lift Habib from his crib and hug him, taking comfort from the feel of his heavy little body pressed sleepily against her own.
One day, Serif returned early from the library. He did not greet his wife or ask after his son, or even remove his coat at the door, as usual, but went straight into his study.
After a few minutes, he called them. Lola did not usually go into the study. Stela cleaned that room herself. Now, she looked at the books that lined the walls. The volumes were even older and finer than those elsewhere in the apartment; books in a half dozen ancient and modern languages, with exquisite hand-tooled bindings of polished leather. But Serif was cradling a small, simply bound book in his gloved hands. He set it down on the desk in front of him and gazed at it with the same expression he wore when looking at his son.
“General Faber visited the museum today,” he said. Stela gasped and clapped a hand to her head. Faber was the feared commander of the Black Hand units, rumored to be responsible for the massacres of thousands.
“No, no, nothing terrible happened. In fact, I think what happened was very good. Today, with the help of the director, we managed to save one of the museum’s great treasures.”
Serif did not choose to relate a full account of what had taken place at the museum earlier that day. He had not even intended to show them the haggadah. But the presence of the book—in his house, in his hands—somehow overpowered his prudence. He turned the pages so that they could admire the artistry of the book, and told them only that the museum director had trusted it to his care.
Serif’s superior was Dr. Josip Boscovic, a Croatian who managed to negotiate an appearance of complicity with the Ustashe regime in Zagreb while remaining a Sarajevan in his heart. Boscovic had been a curator in old coins before moving into the museum’s administration. He was a popular figure in Sarajevo, a fixture at cultural events. His dark hair was slicked back with a highly scented pomade, and his weekly appointment with his manicurist was an immutable rite.
When Faber sent word that he intended to visit the museum, Boscovic realized that his tightrope walk was about to begin in earnest. His own German was poor, so he called Serif into his office and told him he would be needed to translate. He and Serif had different backgrounds and different intellectual interests. But the two men shared the same fierce commitment to Bosnian history and a love for the diversity that had shaped that history. They also shared an unstated recognition that Faber stood for the extinction of diversity.
“Do you know what he wants?” Serif asked.
“He did not say. But I think we can guess. My colleague in Zagreb told me that they looted the museum’s Judaica collection. You know, and I know, that what we have here is infinitely more important. I believe he wants the haggadah.”
“Josip, we can’t give it to him. He will destroy it, as his men have destroyed every Jewish thing in the city.”
“Serif, friend, what choice have we? He might not destroy it. I have heard talk that Hitler plans a Museum of the Lost Race, to exhibit the finest Jewish objects, after the people themselves are gone….”
Serif slapped the back of the chair in front of him. “Is there no limit to the depravity of these people?”
“Shhh.” Boscovic raised both hands to quiet his colleague. He dropped his own voice to a whisper. “They were joking about it, in Zagreb last month. They called it Judenforschung ohne Juden—Jewish Studies Without Jews.” Boscovic stepped from behind his desk and laid a hand on Serif’s shoulder. “If you try to hide this book, you put your life at risk.”
Serif regarded him gravely. “What choice have I? I am kustos. Did it survive five hundred years to be destroyed under my stewardship? If you think I can allow such a thing, my friend, you do not know me.”
“Do what you must do then. But be quick, I beg you.”
Serif returned to the library. With hands that shook, he drew out a box he had labeled ARCHIV DER FAMILIE KAPETANOVIC—TÜRKISCHE URKUNDEN (Archives of the Kapetanovic Family—Turkish Document)s. He lifted a few old Turkish land title deeds from the top of the box. Underneath were several Hebrew codices. He lifted out the smallest one and tucked it under the belt of his trousers, pulling down his coat so that it concealed the bulge. He returned the Turkish deeds to the box and resealed it.
Faber was a spare man, small boned and not particularly tall. He had a gentle voice that he rarely raised much above a whisper, so that people had to pay close attention when he spoke. His eyes were the cool, opaque green of agate stone, set in skin pale and as translucent as the flesh of a fish.
Josip had risen as an administrator because of a charming manner that sometimes bordered on unctuousness. As he greeted the general with a courtly welcome, no one would have known that the back of his neck prickled with nervous sweat. He excused his poor German, apologizing far more profusely than necessary. Serif appeared at the door then, and Josip introduced him. “My colleague is a great linguist; he puts me to shame.”
Serif approached the general and offered his hand. The general’s grip was unexpectedly soft. Serif felt the flaccid hand lying loosely in his. He was aware of the manuscript shifting slightly against his waist.
Faber did not state the purpose of his visit. In an awkward silence, Josip offered a tour of the collections. As they walked through the vaulted halls, Serif gave an erudite account of the various exhibits while Faber paced behind him, slapping his black leather gloves against a pale white palm and saying nothing.
When they arrived at the library, Faber nodded curtly and spoke for the first time. “Let me see your Jewish manuscripts and incunabula.” Shaking slightly, Serif selected volumes from the shelves and laid them on the long table. There was a mathematics text of Elia Mizrahi’s, a rare edition of a Hebrew-Arabic-Latin vocabulary published in Naples in 1488, a Talmud volume printed in Venice.
Faber’s pale hands caressed each volume. He turned the pages with exquisite care. As he fingered the rarest of the codices, peering at the faded inks and delicate, veined parchments, his expression changed. He moistened his lip
s. Serif noted that his pupils were dilated, like a lover’s. Serif looked away. He felt a mixture of disgust and violation, as if he were witness to a pornographic spectacle. Finally, Faber closed the binding of the Venetian Talmud and looked up, his brow raised in a question.
“And now, if you please, the haggadah.”
Serif felt a rivulet of scalding sweat run down his back. He turned up his palms and shrugged. “That’s impossible, Herr General,” he said.
Josip’s face, which had been flushed, turned quite pale.
“What do you mean, ‘impossible’?” Faber’s quiet voice was cold.
“What my colleague means,” said Josip, “is that one of your officers came here yesterday and requested the haggadah. He said it was wanted for a particular museum project of the Führer’s. Of course, we were honored to give him our treasure for such a purpose….”
Serif began to translate Josip’s words, but the general interrupted him.
“Which officer? Give me his name.” He stepped toward Josip. Despite his slight build, the general suddenly seemed to ooze menace. Josip took a step backward, knocking against the bookshelves.
“Sir, he did not give me his name. I…I…did not feel it was my place to ask it…. But if you would come with me to my office, I might be able to give you the paper he signed for me, as a receipt.”
As Serif translated his director’s words, Faber sucked in his breath. “Very well.” He turned on his heel and headed for the door. Josip had only an instant to exchange a glance with Serif. He made it the most eloquent glance of his life. Then, in a voice as calm as a lake on a still day, Serif called after the general. “Please, sir, follow the director. He will lead you to the main stair.”
People of the Book Page 9