by Steven Uhly
He spoke to an athletic, bearded man with blond dreadlocks and an Alsatian on a lead. Together they slunk into a small alleyway between two run-down houses. Goods in exchange for money, Shimon also bought some kit off him, a small syringe, a spoon, a sachet of vinegar. The man left him alone, Shimon sat in the darkest spot he could find and took off his jacket. Because he had no water he kept spitting on the spoon until there was enough liquid. He added the white powder and the vinegar, then held his lighter beneath it until the powder dissolved. He drew the brown liquid up into the needle, tossed away the spoon, took his belt off, wrapped it around his forearm and pulled tight. He pushed up his sleeve, clenched his fist several times and looked in the dark for the right place to insert the needle. When he thought he had found it, he pushed the needle beneath his skin. He felt the pain, he knew that he could die, he thought of the danger of unknown dealers. But he would not be dissuaded, he drew up the plunger slightly and looked for blood. Glimpsing something dark in the tube, he untied the belt with his teeth and pushed the heroin into his arm.
Within seconds everything changed. He stood up and enjoyed the movement of his body. He left the jacket containing his money and passport. He walked down the dark alley, out into Zeedijk, where cars and people and lights and sounds were waiting for him. Everything joined into a harmony, the world was one great work of art in which everything had its place, its color, its oscillation and its feeling. Everything was linked to everything else, including him and Lisa and Tom, they formed a perfect triangle that nothing could destroy. Finally he had found the happiness he was seeking, the happiness of forgetting. The happiness of unconsciousness.
The following morning he woke up in a confined space. He was lying on a camp bed, there was a small, barred window. The door would not open. The memory came back, Lisa’s words, Lisa’s despair, her body, the little boy. Shimon was no longer able to defend himself against the emotions lurking behind the images. He cried uncontrollably until a Dutch police officer opened the door and invited Shimon to follow him. Still weeping he was taken to a desk, on the other side of which sat an officer at a typewriter. Surname: Sarfati. First name: Shimon. Date of Birth: 9/11/1945. Place of birth: Berlin. Nationality: Israeli. Mother’s name: Anna Sarfati. Father’s name: All I know is that he was in the S.S. The perplexed officer glanced up at Shimon, then snapped out of it, typed “Unknown” and asked questions about the night before, which Shimon answered truthfully.
It took a week for the Israeli consulate-general to confirm Shimon’s identity and make arrangements for his deportation. Over the course of that week he became convinced that he had made a big mistake. But it was too late. The door had closed, he had lost forever the only people who had ever meant anything to him. He had no heroin and not enough cigarettes. His body was in pain. At the top of his voice he sang, Papa was a rolling stone, and wept for himself, as if he were standing with Lisa and Tom at an open grave and seeing himself lying in it, All he left us was alone.
168
He had been brought new clothes by the consulate, a white shirt, blue jeans and trainers. Someone from the defense ministry had made a telephone call to ensure that there would be no link between Shimon Sarfati and the illegal possession of drugs. He was in an aisle seat of an EL AL D.C.-8, holding on for dear life. He sweated and smoked cigarettes and ordered wine until he was drunk. When he felt unable to drink any more without throwing up or losing control of his senses, all of a sudden his head became perfectly clear. The airplane stopped moving, Shimon was sitting in the middle of a limitless space, looking around in astonishment.
This lasted only a few seconds before fading away. Sobered, Shimon sensed the plane’s movements and heard its noise. He grabbed onto his armrests and the memory of a brief moment free of anxiety.
169
When Shimon looked up at the façade he felt a reluctance to enter the confines of the building. He was standing outside 7 Hibner Street in Petah Tikva, a stout box with four stories, made from bare concrete. The windows were large. Shimon knew these houses, they had been built everywhere in the 1960s to accommodate refugees from the Arab states and immigrants from all over the world. Usually he felt comfortable amongst such buildings, they seemed far more honest than Jaffa with its beautified antiquity. But on the third floor of this house his mother was waiting for him. He had called her from the airport, he said, I’ve got to talk to you, and he said it in such a way that she could imagine what was awaiting her. His intention had been to confront her, How could you keep that from me? But now he wanted to leave again, go anywhere, down the street, just keep going straight until he reached the end. What he wanted most of all was to lose himself in the world.
He smoked one more cigarette, then pressed the doorbell above the name Anna Stirnweiss. The buzzer sounded almost instantly, as if his mother had been waiting at the door to her apartment ever since his call. Shimon went up the stairs. His mother was standing by the banisters, watching him. In her eyes was a mixture of joy and concern and questions and a hidden accusation, Shimon had known this expression ever since he had been able to think. He ignored it, he gave his mother the obligatory embrace, he noticed that she was not quite so stooped, did not let her shoulders hunch as far forward as she used to. She looked younger, The separation’s done you good.
She went ahead of him into the apartment. She had not been waiting at the door but cooking, his favorite meal, tzimmes with honey and nutmeg, shining chunks of carrot on a large white dish, dried plums, as well as hummus, chopped peppers, sliced cucumber and tomatoes. A cheese platter. Red wine. Bread. Two plates, four glasses, a carafe of water, cutlery.
Shimon saw the table laid for dinner, he stood on a thin line between a feeling of being bribed and another of being loved, he could not decide between the two. He sat and poured himself some wine. His mother sat opposite him. She smiled and said, “I’m so glad you’ve made it back, safe and sound.” She looked timid, as if the allusion to Amsterdam might send him into a rage. Shimon noticed this, he ignored it and downed his glass in one.
“I can’t eat first and then talk, Mama.”
“O.K., let’s talk straightaway.” She gave him a brave smile.
“Tell me how the S.S. men fucked you,” he said, looking at her brutally, mercilessly, expectantly. Anna was more shocked by the expression on his face than by what he had said. She poured herself a glass of wine, her hands were shaking, she noticed it, she ignored it, she drank the wine.
“Your self-pity disgusts me, Shimon.” She looked him straight in the eye, he had not been banking on an answer like that. He stared at his mother, he could not find a distinct emotion, his anger had dissipated, he felt sore, suddenly the love had vanished and he was naked.
“What you did to Lisa and Tom is simply unacceptable. I don’t care how difficult your life is, or what accusations you hurl at me and the rest of the world.” She stared at him, with his anger now gone he was disarmed. She thought for a moment and said, “Shimon, I’m sorry I kept the truth from you for so long; maybe this is why you’re so lost. But at some point people grow up and take their lives in their own hands, at some point they say, So what? I can still make the best of this.”
She paused for breath, she searched for the right words, she said, “Are you really surprised that I didn’t tell you the truth? Do you see where we’re living? Would you have liked to grow up in Israel with the knowledge that you were the result of a rape? Carried out by two or three or four or five S.S. men? Would you have preferred that, Shimon?” She poured herself more wine and drank.
“So long as you think others are responsible for your misfortune, you’ll never be anything but an egoist, do you hear me? An egoist with a small heart who’s chucking his life away.” She took another sip.
Shimon had recovered from his mother’s onslaught, now he sat there listening to her. Everything is linked to everything else, Lisa’s words came into his head.
“You really took the easy way out, didn’t you? You couldn’t sa
y anything and I had to see how I got by? Is that all you’ve got to offer, Mama?” He shook his head as he looked at her. He said, “You’re asking me to look after my son and Lisa, but you did nothing, you were only ever interested in yourself and your secret, you foisted me on Peretz in the hope that the truth would simply disappear. And you’re the one calling me an egoist?”
Anna began to cry. She shouted, “Don’t you understand? I was raped! By five men! My life was finished, but I wasn’t dead! I wasn’t dead! And to make matters worse, I was pregnant!”
“To make matters worse, that’s nicely put, Mama.”
“For God’s sake, Shimon, do you really not understand? I love you! As far as I’m concerned you’ve got nothing to do with those men. You’re my son, no matter how it happened. But I was a broken woman.” Putting her hand on her chest, she said, “Inside here everything was broken. But I couldn’t just lie down, take drugs or drink myself stupid! I had to make sure that I escaped with my life, Shimon. And Peretz was my savior, and he was your savior too. Suddenly there was the prospect of more to life than just wanting to forget but not being able to.”
She sobbed. “I thought I couldn’t love Peretz properly because of what had happened to me. I thought, as time passes and the memories fade I will be able to love Peretz. I was so young, Shimon, far younger than you are now.”
She stopped talking and lowered her head. She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, she sniffed, she said, “Please believe me, Shimon, if I’d known any better I would have done things differently. But I couldn’t. And when you were born . . .” She broke off and looked at Shimon as tears ran down her face.
“You were so pure and innocent, so beautiful. It was like a miracle. How could something like you have come from such a horrific experience? Although I couldn’t understand, it gave me the strength to carry on, you gave me the strength to carry on, Shimon. Without you, perhaps I . . . I’m sorry Shimon, I’m so sorry.” Her voice failed. Shimon said nothing. He was searching inside himself, there was nothing he could say. He poured wine for himself and his mother.
“Let’s eat, Mama,” he said after a while.
Anna nodded courageously, she pulled herself together, smiled at her son, dried her face with the napkin.
They ate.
170
“Is that all, Grandma? Bring up a child, no husband, go to work, don’t get any further with your studies? Is that all?” Lisa sighed and continued knitting the scarf she was going to give Tom for Christmas.
Frau Kramer, who was busy making gloves for her great-grandson, dropped her knitting into her lap and looked out of the tall window, across the deserted allotments to the high tower of Sankt Christophorus. An icy draft drifted through the window frame. Outside it was already dark, the beginning of December 1974. An eventful year lay behind them. Tom’s leaving kindergarten, the holidays at the North Sea in Tobias’s summer house, Tom’s first day at primary school.
And at the same time it was a year when nothing had happened, a lost year for Lisa. Without looking at her granddaughter, Frau Kramer said, “Do you remember the pastor I told you about?”
“Yes, of course.”
“His name was Karl Bergmann. The name came back to me last week, quite out of the blue.”
“Are you sure?”
Frau Kramer nodded, she was absolutely sure, and she was amazed by how memories sometimes vanished from the mind, only to pop up again unscathed. She did not tell her granddaughter that she had remembered the pastor’s name some time ago, and she withheld the misgivings she harbored concerning Lisa’s hopeless search for clues about her parents. She decided it was pointless to discuss with her the question of whether this life was not enough. Who could possibly answer that one? She thought, When I look at Tom I know why I’m still alive. She knew that this did not work for Lisa. The following day Lisa embarked on her search for Karl Bergmann. She telephoned various dioceses in West Germany, telling all of them what she knew. But nobody was able to help. She cycled to the central post office in Donaustrasse and pored over the telephone books of West German towns, but so many people were called Karl Bergmann that she abandoned her plan to ring them all.
One morning two months later, in early 1975, the telephone rang as Lisa was getting her son ready for school. Frau Kramer picked up then called her granddaughter. On the other end of the line was a secretary from the archbishopric of Cologne.
“Frau Kramer,” she said, “do you remember me? You called before Christmas. I think I’ve found your Karl Bergmann. He’s running a mission in Brazil. He left Germany only a few years after the war, which is why it was hard to track him down. But I was lucky, he’s from Cologne and this is where he came back to initially. I don’t have an address or telephone number, unfortunately. If you ask me, I think he’s living a very basic life.”
“Don’t you even have a lead?”
“The only thing I’ve got is this name here.” She said something that Lisa could not understand. Only when the woman spelled it out did a word appear on the notepad: Codajás.
“I can’t tell you any more, I’m afraid. If you ask me, he’s living with savages.”
Lisa thanked the woman and hung up. She had to focus on Tom, make him a roll for break time, put a bottle of water in his satchel and make sure that he did not go out into the cold without a scarf and hat.
When Tom and Frau Kramer had left, she sat down on a chair in the kitchen with the slip of paper in her hand and read the word again. Then she sighed and wondered how far she was prepared to go to find out information.
171
Kibbutz Givat Chaim, March 21, 1974
Dearest Lisa,
I find it hard to write this without dropping to my knees and begging you for forgiveness. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!
Well, I’m still alive. And I’m feeling better. Recently I’ve been telling myself that what happened had to happen exactly as it did so I could write you this letter.
Peretz found me a job in this kibbutz. It’s an hour north of Tel Aviv. A few houses surrounded by fields, nothing else. I’ve been here since September.
I live in a house with the Franks. My bedroom used to be the storeroom. Then they made a hole in the wall and now it’s got a window. Every Thursday I work with Ephraim Frank in the orange groves, he uses the bow rake and I use the leaf rake. We aerate the soil, do the weeding, check the trees for pests. Sometimes he tells me about Germany, about his childhood in Dortmund, about the beautiful cities, the concert halls. About his negotiations with Eichmann when he was arranging for boats full of Jews to go down the Danube to the Black Sea and from there to Palestine. He could have bailed out any time—once he went to the Zionist Congress in Switzerland but then returned to Germany to save even more Jews! He never talks about these things unless I ask him. If Peretz hadn’t told me beforehand who Ephraim Frank was, I probably wouldn’t know to this day.
He also talked about Bricha, Peretz’s work, the large number of Jews who came to Berlin, fleeing the pogroms in Poland. About the President Warfield. Pöppendorf. My story—our story.
I like Ephraim, he’s a very special guy. When I asked him if he was thinking of writing a book about his life, he said, “I live in the present, not in the past.” And then he just went on working.
I work hard here, it does me the world of good. I’m trying to knock my ruined body back into shape. I’ve stopped smoking, I don’t drink alcohol anymore. And I’m clean.
I love you, Lisa. I want to learn how to be a proper father. If you still want me to I’ll come to Germany.
Please send Tom a kiss from me and tell him that I’m with him even though he can’t see me.
Love, Shimon
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In the autumn Sarah turned up at the door unexpectedly. She looked as if she had not slept a wink all night. Anna invited her in and gave her something to eat. She suspected that Schmuel had left her, but Sarah shook her head without saying a word. Anna gave her Shimon
’s room, Sarah got into bed and slept until the following morning. When Anna woke her she wanted to go straight back to sleep. But Anna forced her to get up and take a shower.
Later they had breakfast. They sat at the table, Sarah in the place where Shimon had sat months earlier to confront his mother. Children, Anna thought. She said, “What’s wrong?”
Sarah stared at the empty plate in front of her. Impassively she said, “I’ve left him.”
“Why? Wasn’t he treating you well?”
Sarah looked up in surprise.
“Yes, he was. He was . . . very good to me.” She took a deep breath. “He didn’t want to have any more children, he said, I’ll be geriatric by the time they’re grown up.” She shrugged. “So I didn’t have any.” She paused, then said, “And now I’m forty-one.” She was gasping, as if lacking oxygen, she said, “And it’s too late.” She closed her eyes.
Anna tried to think of something to cheer her up. She said, “You’ve already been a mother, Sarah. Think of Shimon. You helped me get through with him. For years you were the only person he trusted apart from me.” In that very moment she asked herself whether this was the truth. Two women with grand delusions: one, because she had to conceal the fact that she had become a mother so violently; the other, because she needed to be adopted by a stranger to survive the death of her family. How lonely Shimon must have been!