by Steven Uhly
Military police led the six hundred men into an old warehouse which had hastily been prepared for the occasion. Canteen staff from the army sat them at rickety steel-tube tables and gave them a warm meal. Afterward they were issued with new clothes. The army outfitters, a state concern in Moscow, had delivered gray felt coats, coarse cloth trousers and shirts, all especially made with no insignia or rankings, Who are these for? the business had asked, For no one, came the reply, which meant: Better not ask!
The six hundred men cooperated with everything, they did not ask, How come? The food put before them in Soviet army enamel bowls tasted so good that they noticed nothing else, the new clothes felt so warm that they were almost comfortable in their emaciated bodies. Even had they known that the only reason they were being allowed home was that one government wanted better relations with the other, even had they known that the warm food and new clothing had been provided to avoid them leaving here looking so scruffy and wretched, because economic interests were involved, a lot of money, this would not have bothered them in the slightest.
Meanwhile another goods train had arrived from the west. They boarded this train, the military police bolted the doors, the train departed. When day broke the men could see that the landscape was no longer white. They could see the last withered leaves on the trees, furrows frozen hard, gray clouds, they could see the open landscape, they suspected that this was Poland, the same Poland into which they had once charged like invincibles, like supermen, like gods. Like devils, their Russian escorts would have said, and they would have answered, No, like soldiers carrying out our orders, and it would have been the truth, but the truth—and they would have had a vague sense of this—would also have been that the two were not necessarily contradictory.
Now they stood silently at the small windows of the goods train, peering out at the Polish morning, and in reality peering out at their own past, but this was not on their minds at that moment, they had survived hell, they had paid the price, they had been released, they were traveling home, they did not ask themselves, What is home, does it still exist, did it ever exist, is it not a construct of the mind, an illusion we’re still chasing, now without a Führer, but just as blindly? Won’t we be disappointed, stranded, standing outside the door, with everything at home turned uncanny, our eyes no longer recognizing anything, our hearts groping in vain, our hands reaching out into emptiness?
Amongst the six hundred men was one not standing by the windows, not gazing out at the autumn. He was sitting on the floor, smoking makhorka roll-ups, he was called Otto Deckert, he had been a simple solider in the Wehrmacht, side by side with his comrades he had defended the fortress at Posen until a bullet flew toward him, was it for me or was it for you, who did it knock to the ground, who lay at whose feet, as if a part of me?
Otto Deckert sat on the floor, leaning against a side of the carriage, in the dim light it was hard to make out his chiseled profile, his aquiline nose, his rigid facial features, his tiny wrinkles, which would never be particularly furrowed, but would increase in number as he got older.
Otto Deckert spoke to nobody and nobody spoke to him. He had survived as if by a miracle, but also because his fear of dying was so great that he made the right decisions, put on the right uniform and burned the wrong one.
On the inside of his left upper arm Otto Deckert had a bullet wound, a grazing shot had torn the skin, taking away what once may have been there. When the Soviets asked if he was in the Waffen S.S., because it was exactly in that spot that they had their blood group tattooed, Otto Deckert was well prepared, and instead of saying No like thousands of others before him who had not been believed, he told the truth, which was that ethnic Germans from outside the Reich, like himself, had been given a similar tattoo in the same place during the course of their medical examination in the holding camp. He was fortunate; the Soviet officer conducting the interrogation believed him. The way you look, he said with a smile, they wouldn’t have taken you anyway. Then he grinned broadly and exclaimed, You look more like a Kyrgyz! He repeated his words in Russian and the soldiers around him laughed. Otto Deckert joined in the laughter because he was a polite man, but as he laughed he could not help laughing for real, without knowing why. He laughed until he felt on the verge of tears, but at that moment the Soviet officer smacked his palm on the small wooden table and Otto Deckert fell silent. Where were you settled? asked the officer, whose expression had lost all traces of the joviality that moments before had filled it. Otto Deckert remained calm, he gave the name of a small town near Posen and in his mind’s eye images from another life flitted past.
Now Otto Deckert was heading homeward, but he knew that no home awaited him there, he had to be sure he behaved in the right way when they arrived in Herleshausen and then later in Friedland. He concentrated. He smoked makhorka. He did not think about the man he had once been, he had set up a fifth chamber in his heart into which he had placed everything, his entire past, before locking it and tossing the key into oblivion. Otto Deckert’s heart kept beating as if nothing had happened.
23
Peretz was on the interzonal train to Munich talking to Peretz. Both of them were wearing the same British uniform, both had removed the Jewish insignia from the lapel shortly after their arrival on May 8, 1945, both had pulled the same trigger to shoot the German soldier with the loudhailer. Both seemed to be but one Peretz.
And yet now everything had changed. Peretz was talking to Peretz and what he had to say he was shouting into Peretz’s head, sending it into a spin, while around him the Reichsbahn train rattled along branch lines only, for the main connections had been destroyed. The train was like a moving corpse because there was no more Reichsbahn, no more Reich transport ministry, just bodies of metal and wood traversing this cold land, occupied by the victors.
Peretz had only traveled across the country once before, back in the spring of ’45, in the opposite direction. They had been victorious, they had advanced with the British Army from northern Italy into Austria, and in Vienna the order came to disband the Jewish Brigade. The bitterness had been intense, So little war, they said, We’re not having that, his comrades grumbled. Then they forged plans, the Jewish insignia disappeared and with it disappeared all the right and proper things that had brought them here, To fight against the Kingdom of the Night, as one of them had said, a former German music student.
But while Peretz’s comrades began tracking down Nazis and—in the Austrian forests, which had just come into full bloom, and under the Austrian sun, which shone mildly on everyone—strangling them, and putting them in sacks weighed down with stones and drowning them in lakes, Peretz fled north. Heeding the call of the American military rabbi, he had battled his way with Avi and an army lorry, which he had rarely been separated from since, driving around and around to save ever more Jews from their Polish compatriots.
Even then Peretz was no longer a single Peretz, but like a sheet of paper with a tiny rip, and each time he picked up the German soldier’s loudhailer the rip had become a little larger and, as if out of thin air, a woman had jumped into the gap and made herself at home, which is why Peretz took in nothing of the countryside that rolled torpidly past his window, the small Hesse villages that looked like snowballs without snow, with motifs from Grimm’s fairy tales, which is why this time Peretz did not ask himself, Why is all this allowed to continue to exist as if nothing had happened? Why can’t we destroy all this too?
Peretz talked to Peretz, and what he had to say left no room for anything else. Peretz shouted at Peretz that Peretz was sitting on his shabby seat in a daze, casting blank glances at the five American soldiers sweating with him in the narrow compartment because the heating was not working properly. Peretz did not think, We’re sweating because the train’s broken and outside people are freezing because the country’s broken. This is what one of the Americans said, a young lad who had also got to the fighting too late, he was somewhat regretful as well.
Peretz himself was broke
n, torn between two possibilities of being a whole man: one who stands by his actions, and one who is strong enough to dismiss them. One who resists a woman, and one who has the magnanimity to let her act as she pleases. One who has done what he had to do, and one who knows he has made a mistake.
Peretz talked to Peretz, and as he talked the train headed westward past Frankfurt, though there was little of the city to be seen. Almost everything that had once stood, things and living beings alike, was lying on the ground, transformed, and now the rain fell on it all, burying it beneath a sad veil. The train moved slowly, the day was long and yet dusk was falling, gray and impenetrable, and Peretz had so much to say that he lacked all sense of the passing hours, of the soldiers changing their faces, uniforms and conversations, and when Peretz held out his pass or greeted a superior officer this was the only time that both Peretzes acted in concert.
Peretz talked and Peretz listened. Pictures flashed up between them, sounds that nobody else could hear. Everything resulted in a sluggishly flowing river of rebukes, memories, self-accusations, justifications. It can’t go on like this. You’re a hero. What have you done? Throw away that loudhailer! Forget the woman. You’re risking your life for others. You are a hero.
Peretz knew what Peretz was talking about. Ever since the woman had established herself in his core, everything else had become a side issue. A man is in love, Peretz! But a man has a mission that is more important than love, Peretz! A man can be in love and at the same time pursue his mission in life, Peretz!
But Peretz could not. No matter how hard he tried, this woman was a permanent barrier between him and the world, between him and himself. Even when Klausner, one of the drivers he had engaged, stopped his lorry right in the middle of the road to Szczecin and haggled over more money, even when he insulted him, and then when Klausner lashed out with his fist to emphasize his point, just before Avi and the other drivers intervened, only one of the two Peretzes was present. Peretz was getting on Peretz’s nerves with his sentimentality. You’re mad, Peretz, Peretz said, She’s a Yekke, no, she’s not even that, she’s a German, a chancer, beware of her! What do you know about the woman? You’re a hero of Israel, Peretz!
Thus Peretz spoke incessantly to Peretz, as the evening settled gloomily over the land, smothering all light, and the train clattered so slowly that everyone apart from Peretz let their heads drop and stopped talking about their adventures, the miserable rations, the miracles of the black markets, homesickness and the beauty of German women. All that remained was the dim light in the compartment and the black window, and now, when Peretz looked to the left, he saw the other Peretz gazing at him critically, sadly, helplessly, and said: You’re working for the Institution for Immigration B here. You and Abba and the military rabbi and Ephraim Frank, the new commander in Munich, you lot have to organize the flight of thousands of people. Don’t be an egotist, don’t be a fool, focus on your mission. What the hell is wrong with you, Peretz? Who are you, actually, Peretz? Yes, Peretz said to Peretz, Who am I, actually? At that moment the train was passing through northern Bavaria, which now belonged to the Americans. They did not yet know that they would be turning this part of the defeated Reich into a temporary haven for the Jews of Europe, but very soon the American Jews around Morgenthau would demand greater engagement, and then President Truman would think about the forthcoming election and the Jewish votes, and the time would come when camps for Jews would be set up all over Bavaria, which is why Munich was the right place for Bricha’s headquarters.
Until now, however, there had been only one man in Munich, who had traveled there from Vienna under an alias, who knows, perhaps at this very moment he was sitting in an interzonal train somewhere near Linz. Peretz was on his way to see this man.
If there was anything keeping him together it was the world around him, with its good and evil, its Jews and British who had become entangled in a shadow conflict. If there was anything keeping Peretz together it was his life’s mission, which at this very moment he was in control of because he had never stopped functioning and had boarded the interzonal train punctually, despite having been stood up by Anna; he had come to the station without a goodbye kiss.
Peretz had not thought, I hope nothing’s happened to her, I hope she’s alright. He had thought, Why’s she doing this to me? Then he chastised himself for thinking this rather than something more gallant, more mature, something representative of Peretz as he appeared to the outside world, rather than this Peretz here, who no longer recognized himself in the reflection of the carriage window.
Time passed again, nobody saw Augsburg over to the west, the train headed through a land that was not at war and not at peace, carrying a man who was battling for himself without knowing what his weapons were.
It was night when he arrived in Munich. The train came to a stop shortly before the main railway station because the roof still lay where it had collapsed onto the tracks. Tired people climbed down from the carriages, it was dark and wet, Peretz was jostled, he fought against the feeling of forlornness, he fought against the feeling of missing Anna, always Anna, as if she had to take him by the hand and escort him, as if she were not merely a woman but his, Peretz’s salvation from the pointlessness of existence.
Someone grabbed his shoulder. Turning around, Peretz saw the face of a man who gave him a friendly smile. His pale complexion, high forehead and narrow Roman nose lent him an aristocratic air. Peretz knew this face, even though the two men had never met. They shook hands, Ephraim Frank introduced himself as Ernst Caro, Peretz gave his own false name. In case someone was watching or even listening to them amongst the throng of passengers stumbling uncertainly across obsolete tracks to get to the street, all they would see were two British employees of U.N.R.R.A., the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, greeting each other politely in English, then walking over to a dark saloon car where the driver, a conspicuously slim man with sunken cheeks, opened the doors to the back seats, closed them again behind the men, then got in himself, started the engine and drove off.
Outside, the bizarre shadows of bombed-out buildings drifted by, Peretz peered out, it seemed that there was only one real city left. It always looked identical, always identically destroyed, always identically unrecognizable, and even if he traveled twelve hours southward by train he still came to the same place, as if time and space had been extinguished, as if at the end of all journeys everything always had to start from the beginning. You’ve been blinded by love, the voice within him said, That’s all. It’ll pass. He nodded involuntarily. Maybe that was it, but maybe he was simply seeing the world for the first time as it really was, he did not know, he knew nothing any longer except that he had come here because his new commander wanted to talk to him and other officers from Bricha and the Institution for Immigration B.
As they drove the circuitous route to their destination Ephraim Frank scrutinized his subordinate without saying a word. It was curfew and nobody was out in the dark streets except for soldiers patrolling in jeeps. Only the main roads had been cleared, they had to rattle along a tramline for some of the way. The two men sat in silence beside each other in the back, one attempting to return to the present, the other becoming abruptly aware, now that he set eyes on the maimed city, of the enormity of task he had agreed to undertake months previously.
When the silence had lingered for too long, Ephraim Frank said in a German accent, “I read you were born in Palestine.”
Peretz turned his gaze from the window, where he had been staring at his reflection superimposed on the dark city.
“That’s right, Commander.”
“You can call me Erich, that is . . . was my name when I was still a German. I imagine I’ll be using it more frequently again here.”
“Where in Germany?” Peretz asked, avoiding calling him anything.
“Gelsenkirchen.” Peretz shrugged.
“I don’t know it.”
“Very beautiful place, lots of workers, good people.” W
hen he broke off, Peretz watched him briefly.
Frank cleared his throat, then said, “In fact I spent my childhood in Dortmund. We moved there before I started school.”
“I’ve heard of Dortmund, but I’ve never been.”
“I bet it looks just like here now.”
“I bet it does, Commander.” Ephraim Frank said nothing.
Peretz Sarfati wanted to avoid giving any hint that he knew exactly who Ephraim Erich Frank was. He did not know for sure why he was behaving like this, but the Peretz in him who knew everything suspected that it was just fear. Fear of what? he would have asked had he had the time to look out of the window again, and the reflection with the city’s broken stones might have answered, Fear of someone who’s actually achieved something, fear of someone who’s a true hero and isn’t surprised if in spite of this people fail to recognize him. Fear of something pure that presents you with the murky soup of your soul more painfully than any mirror.
But he never got round to it, for Ephraim Frank announced, “We’re here.”
Josef Leibowitz, the driver, sucked in his sunken cheeks even further as he steered the car onto an elongated square lined with towering late-nineteenth-century houses. Although this square was in darkness too, Peretz could see that most of the buildings were still standing. Generous entrances with broad, wrought-iron gates told of rich people who had immortalized their pride in stone. The car stopped at the corner, Josef Leibowitz opened the doors, the men got out. Peretz looked about him, high up on the building in front of them he noticed a dark-blue sign with white Sütterlin writing. Paradeplatz.