My Holocaust

by Tova Reich

  Norman cleared his throat. “Well, you’re definitely cryptic, I was right about that at least,” he pronounced syllable by syllable with an ingratiating grin, anticipating a reward for his witticism. “Okay, so let’s see now. You’re not Mara and you’re not really Marrano—neither a crypto-Jew, according to the accepted usage of the word, and certainly not a swine, which of course is what Marrano means literally, it was a pejorative,” he expounded pedantically, showing off perversely. But he was thinking, too, that she was also not from anywhere, she spoke no language without a foreign accent, not even her native tongue. “So what are you, if I may ask?”

  She was a Buddhist past-life therapist, she told him after she had caught her breath and calmed down. What she did was help clients to heal and renew themselves by excavating their former lives in order to pinpoint the impact, both positive and negative, in terms of obsessions and compulsions, repetitive patterns and cycles, on the present. “You mean, like Gilguli?” Norman asked. She did not seem at all surprised at this reference, or curious as to how he had so effortlessly drawn the connection. “Jake’s the real thing,” she said, nodding her head with satisfaction, “a genuine gilgul, one of our great reincarnation success stories. He used to be Jack Gallagher, raking in a whole lot of bread as an investment banker in New York. One day, he showed up at our zendo, totally bummed out, an awful mess, on a really bad trip. But with a lot of very hard work on everyone’s part, we uncovered his past life as Yankel Galitzianer, gassed and cremated right here at Auschwitz, and now he has returned to search for his ashes so as to put everything to rest and move on. It’s been a really heavy journey for him, he’s Roshi’s prize disciple, a real phenomen.”

  But even though her life’s work focused on the past, Marano was stubbornly reluctant to fill Norman in on her own, though she was ready, it is true, even avid, to share updates on some of the people they knew in common. Norman offered her the latest on Camp Ziona’s head counselor, Jerry Goldberg, the owner’s charismatic son. He had mutated into a world famous zealot known as Yehudi HaGoel, Norman reported, a notorious settlement leader on Israel’s West Bank, a polygamist in the Old Testament mold who had been anointed king of the secessionist realm of Judea and Samaria, prompting the remainder of the state of Israel to petition the Arabs to hurl their stones exclusively at Yehudi’s fanatic kingdom and leave the rest of them alone—“a shondeh and disgrace to our people,” Norman concluded, shaking his head in disgust. Marano smiled complacently. “You just really have to dig it, though,” she marveled from the depths of her mysterious Eastern wisdom, “the way human beings are so cyclic in their behavior. Look at Jerry Goldberg, for example. Check him out, and what do you see? Still a head counselor after all these years—on the wheel of life, even in the Holy Land, always and forever, the once and future head counselor, he can’t escape it, it’s his karma.” For her part, though, Marano wondered how it had happened that Norman had failed to recognize Mickey Fisher-roshi. “Don’t you remember him from Camp Ziona?” she asked with a superior smile of mild reproach. “The lifeguard, Moish Fisher—how could you have missed him? But then again, you didn’t recognize me either. You’re too into yourself to really see out, that’s your problem, Normie, you were probably a carthorse with blinders pulling a junk wagon in one of your past lives; you should come to the zendo, we can work on you. But really—how could you forget Moish Fisher the lifeguard? He was the big man on campus at Ziona! And isn’t it really heavy—I mean, talk about cyclic patterns? Just like in those days he would float around the pool with a net on a pole, fishing out the turds that the campers dropped in the water, so too today, in his present incarnation, he cleanses our impurities, he continues the holy holy work of guarding our lives.” She wove her fingers over her taut belly, which was visibly undulating like the waves of a rocking sea, and smiled with calm mysterious wisdom. Norman was inspired to ask if what was struggling and kicking inside that animate belly was Fisher’s, but he was suddenly struck silent, seized by shyness, unable to enter so private a zone. He recalled how in the Auschwitz museum Fisher had introduced her as “one name, like Madonna,” which perhaps was not, as Norman had at first assumed, a reference to the celebrity and superstar, but, rather, a scriptural hint that this conception was meant to be accepted on faith as immaculate, and probing was forbidden. So the question he asked instead was, “Is that how Fisher landed in a wheelchair—because of a swimming accident?”

  Marano eyed him peremptorily. “It’s too heavy to talk about,” she cautioned by way of an answer. “Suffice it to say that Roshi chooses to view his present life from a sitting position.”

  Norman wanted to find out more—for example, whatever happened to that suspiciously dark-skinned hippie she had run off with, provoking such a scandal in their circles from Riverside Drive to Park Avenue, and also, how in the world had she, an elite Ziona alumna, crossed paths with such a low-caste type like this Tommy Messiah? But Marano drew in her lips, sealing them defiantly, until Norman let drop with tantalizing disingenuousness that he happened to possess some extraordinarily fascinating news about her mother, which she evidently appeared not to know.

  “My mother’s been dead for over fifteen years,” Marano reminded him frostily.

  Norman was well aware of that, of course, but in terms of giving off vital signs, surely the fact that a person is dead should not be a hindrance, to Marano, of all people, it should be meaningless, especially in her line of work as a past-life therapist. This, as it happened, was news about her mother’s present incarnation. At first Marano stared at him as at some benighted primitive caught up in a dark-age web of voodoo and superstition, but then she remembered her position; he possessed information that she wanted, she was his hostage, and she reconsidered, capitulated. The last she had heard, she told him, her ex-husband was a convert to Islam, fulfilling the commandment of jihad in Afghanistan, earning a small living on the side by giving private tai chi lessons to the children of terrorist sheikhs dwelling sumptuously in their mountain complexes, with a separate cave for each wife. As for Tommy Mashiach, as she referred to him, she knew him from when she was living in Israel, when she was crashing in an alcove in the Western Wall tunnels, surviving by hawking her poems for a shekel a piece at the Dung Gate. At the time, Tommy had a heavy metal club called the Holy Rock Café where he specialized in trance music and making people happy, in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, as close as you could get to the Temple Mount, the most sacred piece of real estate on earth, from where the golden age of redemption and nirvana will someday be ushered in—even as a Buddhist she believed this.

  “Now what about my mother?” Marano asked, a bit like a woman who had just been violated and was demanding compensation.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t realize it yesterday when we met you in the hair room at the Auschwitz museum,” Norman began with almost unbearable deliberateness, stretching out every syllable, holding her captive. “Your problem is that you’re too rigid and dogmatic, too fixated on your latest ism, which makes you, I’m afraid, remarkably clueless. You must have been a mule in one of your past lives, butting your hard head against a stone wall.” He glanced at her face vindictively, imagining that she looked properly insulted. Good, he thought, he had gotten her back. Then he went on to inform her that that very attractive older woman who was part of their group—Gloria, the blonde, had Marano despite her meditative state bothered to notice?—this blond chick was, for Marano’s information, her mother’s successor, none other than Mrs. Leon Lieb, her father’s second wife, which made her, if Norman had this figured out correctly, Marano’s wicked stepmother. And, what was more, to add to the festivities, that dumpy woman with the short hair and red-framed glasses—Bunny?—she was Gloria’s daughter from a previous marriage, which made her—you got it!—Marano’s wicked stepsister. “Isn’t this all so heartwarming?” Norman was winding up, like someone far too urbane for such mawkish family togetherness. “It’s like the happy ending of a Victorian novel, when all the
characters discover that they’re related to each other through an incredible windfall of coincidences. But really, how is it possible that you didn’t know who they were? Don’t tell me you’ve never met them. As far as I recall, your father’s been married to Gloria for ten years at least.”

  Marano lowered her head. “I’d heard he remarried,” she whispered flatly, as if to strengthen and restore herself. “I haven’t seen him for years, since before my mother’s funeral. I was living with wild dogs in a cave in Ibiza, and they couldn’t find me in time. So that’s his new wife. Well, she’s thin—at least he finally got himself someone thin. She doesn’t look religious, though. It’s hard to believe that my father would ever have married someone who isn’t religious.”

  “No, she’s not religious, that’s for sure,” Norman drawled out snidely, “definitely not religious, trust me.” Then, taking on the role of newly anointed counselor and comforter, he very slowly and ostentatiously went on to dish out his trove wrapped up as sage reflections. “In a way, I think you can say that your father has shifted denominations—from Orthodox Judaism to Holocaust Judaism, which has emerged as the main branch of Judaism nowadays in any case. He’s been very active in our museum in Washington, a mega donor, right up there on the wall at the head of the pack, for over a million bucks. He actually competed against my father for the chairmanship of the museum, he wanted it pretty badly, but then, of course, he had to withdraw his candidacy because of his legal problems—you know, the nursing home scandals? Somehow that old story got out—God alone knows who leaked it. Anyway, don’t worry, there are no hard feelings at all between our dads—mine actually just named yours chairman of the first annual ten-thousand-dollars-a-plate partisan and resistance fighters dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. You’ll be happy to hear that your father has made tremendous strides with respect to coming out of the closet about his Holocaust past, opening up and talking about what happened to him during the war.”

  “What are you saying? My father came to the States in 1939—before the war.”

  “I know that’s what you think. That’s what we all thought, as a matter of fact—because your father, like so many other survivors, could not talk about the past, it was not only much too painful but the subject was also taboo. There was a conspiracy of silence. But thanks to the whole exciting and supportive Back to the Holocaust movement, he has become a shining example of recovered memory. If you can cheer on Jack Gallagher as he morphs into Yankel Galitzianer on the path to becoming Jake Gilguli, how can you begrudge your own father the well-earned rewards of his brave saga during the Holocaust, when, for your information, as a resistance fighter, he courageously dressed up in women’s clothing to smuggle ammunition into the Warsaw Ghetto in the most perilous and life-threatening of circumstances? Really, Marano, you should be very proud to be the child of such a Holocaust hero, just as I am. My father, as it happens, was also a partisan, who, in his particular case, fought against the Nazis in the woods. Our dads are comrades in arms, so to speak, or whatever—the Holocaust can make pretty strange bedfellows, you know. And don’t think there aren’t any benefits from all this for you. I’m happy to inform you that you are now fully eligible and qualified to join the Second Generation Club. I’m the president. Give me your address at the zendo, and I’ll send you an application. We 2-Gers need to close ranks and stick together for the moral betterment of all mankind. The simple fact is, we’re more human than other people because of what our parents went through.”

  Marano began fishing in a pouch of her caftan for something, which Norman truly wanted to believe was pen and paper to write down her address as he had requested, were it not for the fact that her shoulders were heaving so uncontrollably. He grew acutely concerned that, because of him, she had been dangerously overcome with grief at the awakening of these painful family memories—she, a woman in such a vulnerable physical state—it would be disastrous if she went into labor right here of all vile places on earth, right now when he was on such an exacting schedule, he had to get to Nechama, and then off to Birkenau by two, they were expecting him. Drawing a limp tissue out of his pants pocket and dangling it squeamishly from the pincer of two fingertips, he tried to shove it at her. She pushed his hand away. Lifting her head, she sputtered, “My father dressed up as a woman—that is so far out!” Great spasmodic brays of hilarious laughter were coming out of her, hysterical tears of delight streaming down her cheeks. Norman was inexpressibly relieved that he had succeeded so brilliantly at amusing her, that she was, thanks to him, so obviously entertained, so deliriously happy, when, all of the sudden, in a flash, for which he was totally unprepared, the howls of laughter shifted to howls of lamentation so convulsive and terrible, so splitting and cataclysmic, it was as if she were being torn in two. Instinctively, Norman clapped his hands to the sides of his head to cover his ears.

  “My poor, poor, poor mommy,” Marano wailed.

  Tommy Messiah ambled over from his stand, along with Shimshon ben-Yishai, the kibbutznik teacher, who must have made an appearance, Norman calculated, while he and Marano were catching up on old times. Both cowboys were smoking marijuana, and Tommy Messiah passed his joint to Marano. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked. “Here, take—you need it.” “Are you crazy?” Norman screamed. “This is against the law!” Then, abruptly switching tactics in an attempt to sway them through blunt self-interest, he added, “What about the baby?” Marano took a long toke, relaxing instantly, as if washed gently under a spell. “Oh, don’t worry, Normie,” she said, her composure astonishingly restored, “Rumi’s used to it.” “Rumi?” Norman cried, beside himself. “The baby’s Rumi? How do you know it’s a boy?” “Boy or girl,” Marano asserted with conviction, “it’s Rumi. I don’t ever need to know what it is. I’m channeling Rumi.”

  Norman was furious. They were trying to destroy him with their contraband, their filthy cannabis; pot was illegal in Eastern Europe, plain and simple, open-and-shut. What if a local Oswiecim cop just happened to stroll by right at that moment, whistling his favorite Jew-baiting tune, his paws clasped behind his back swinging a caveman cudgel? They could be arrested on the spot, thrown into some sort of primitive rat-infested Polish dungeon with a stinking hole in the ground for a latrine, they would be disappeared, no one would ever hear from them again. And if by some miracle the Poles discovered what kind of colossal big fish they had caught—Norman Messer himself, president of Holocaust Connections, Inc., only son of the chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, et cetera and so forth—all hell would break loose, the shit would hit the fan, a scandal would erupt of major diplomatic and international proportions on the front pages of every newspaper across the globe, it would be a field day for the world’s anti-Semitic cartel, not only his own reputation was on the line but the future of the entire museum, of the Holocaust itself, of the six million, of all Jews dead and alive. He glared poisonously at the three of them as they mindlessly, insolently passed the dope back and forth right in front of Auschwitz, of all places. They had not one iota of respect, what did they care? They had nothing left to lose, they were already bandits, outlaws, renegades; even Marano, once a registered card-carrying member of the Jewish aristocracy, was now an outcast, a dropout, a nonentity, she had burned all her bridges behind her. But why drag him into their smelly little losers’ circle? They were spitefully plotting to get him into big-time trouble, that was for sure, they were trying to ruin him, but he would not allow it, he would not let it happen. He zoomed in on Shimshon. “What are you doing here?” he lashed out. “Who’s minding the kids? Where are the little darlings?”

  Shimshon treated himself to another long and satisfying drag on a joint, and then, with a cordial dip of his shaven head, graciously offered it to Tommy Messiah. “Eh, to answer your friendly questions in the order they were asked, as our sages advise, I am here, as you can see for yourself, hanging out on a beautiful day in Auschwitz, the largest Jewish cemetery in the world minus the insignificant convenienc
e of graves, partaking of some weed with my old comrade, Tommy Mashiach. With regard to who is minding my kids—eh, I am happy to report that they have minds of their own, thank you very much. Finally, as to where they are at the moment—they are in the fresh air and wide open spaces of Birkenau park, running freely around among the ashes and bones. They need the exercise, they are all pent up from this unwholesome trip. Eh, we hired a stripper last night to give them some release, but it did not work, I regret to say.”

  “Is this guy for real?” Norman was practically screeching in consternation, turning to Marano, his only hope, however feeble, of an ally in this impossible situation.

  “Normie?” she said, drawing in the last precious bit of essence of grass from the roach of her joint, which she brought smoldering up to her lips pincered at the tip of a pair of rusty tweezers that Tommy Messiah had provided. “Chill—okay? Nobody’s going to get busted. We’re all cool here. Everything’s under control—okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” Norman said, straining every neuron to map out a plan of action—and then to figure out a backup plan just in case. His heart in his chest was pounding so violently he thought it would burst from its cage. “So, okay, if we’re arrested, I’ll just tell them that my daughter’s a nun at the Carmelite convent here. Then they’ll have to let me go. They’ll have to hush it up—to avoid a major embarrassment to the Catholic church.”

  “Your daughter’s a nun?” Marano exclaimed. “Normie, that’s the coolest thing! Who would have ever thought? Normie Messer, the biggest schlump, schmegegie, and schlemiel at Camp Ziona, the most uptight, pompous jerk-off on the scene, that insufferable, mean-spirited suck-up who made all the girls gag—and he would be the one to grow up to have a daughter a nun! Way to go, Normie!”