by Annie Murray
And behind him, somewhere on this hill with its apartments and gardens, were some of his family. For those moments of exhilaration he chose not to think of the old woman’s words: perhaps you should not expect too much of your father.
He breakfasted on hard-boiled eggs with pure white shells, cucumbers and yesterday’s stale pittot, the pockets of bread into which he stuffed the eggs, and with it, weak black coffee.
Refreshed, and nervous, he was ready to leave at an hour far too early to call on anyone. The day was warm, with hazy strips of cloud, and he decided to use up some of the time by walking up the Carmel once more instead of looking for a bus. It was Saturday tomorrow, he realized, the Jewish Shabbat. The religious Jews would go to Shul. He felt a pang for a moment. Had he been wrong to disappoint the Leishmanns and not to go to a religious kibbutz? Gila and the others at Hamesh showed no sign of wanting to go to Shul or anything else involving a synagogue. ‘In Israel we are free to be Jews,’ he was told. ‘We have the land – we do not need a synagogue.’ And he knew that he was finding a sense of his belonging as a Jew in this way as well. Here he could stop being Davey, an odd, trying-to-oblige mixture of Quaker and Jew, beloved son yet cuckoo in the nest. He could learn to be himself.
David climbed and climbed, physical exertion a distraction from the fear of what lay before him. Unlike last night, the old woman’s warning now nagged in his mind. What exactly had she meant? What had happened to Hermann Mayer? There were so many horrible possibilities that he could not even bear to guess.
I must do this, he thought, pushing down hard on his legs on the steep road. I must see him and offer myself as his son. I need to know him – and perhaps he needs to know me, that I exist. But if he doesn’t want me I mustn’t be disappointed. At least I will have seen him for myself. After all, I already have a family . . .
Michaelangelo Street was high on the central Carmel, a quiet side street lined on one side with eucalyptus and bushes of pale blue plumbago flowers. On the other were sandy-coloured apartment blocks of two or three floors in the traditional style with stone steps running up the outside. They made David think of the pictures of Bible villages he used to draw as a child. From somewhere he could hear the low humming of an electric generator.
Mrs Spielman had not been able to tell him the number of the apartment, so he had prepared himself to ask. When he went to the door of the first apartment block, however, he saw that the name of the occupants was written above the bell. Kauffman. He wouldn’t need to knock on doors! He climbed the stairs. Hirsch, Aron. On to the next block: Weisz, Eisner, Perlmann. He moved quietly up and down the stairs, absurdly nervous in case anyone came out and challenged him on the doorstep. Would he ever find his father like this? It seemed too ridiculously simple to suppose the name would just be there, among these others. Perhaps he had even changed his name?
He reached the fourth block: first floor, Rubenstein, second floor, another Hirsch, third floor, Mayer. There it was, in neat black letters, in front of his unbelieving eyes. MAYER!
From inside the apartment he could hear a voice, then realized it was too fast and fluent to be anything but a radio. He was standing trying to take in the implications of what he had to do next, when he heard someone coming up the steps behind him, the slapping tread of someone wearing mules. A broad-faced woman in her thirties appeared, hair tied back in a scarf. She gave David a curt nod and immediately rang on the Mayer doorbell. David, unable to get past without rudely pushing her, shrank back into the corner.
Forty-Four
The door opened. Over the sound of the radio David heard a guttural female voice say bocker tov (good morning), in a tone which suggested the visit was expected, and the woman in the scarf disappeared inside. The door began to close, but the occupant evidently caught a glimpse of him standing out there. It swung open again and David saw a middle-aged woman, her greying hair pinned softly up in a bun. She was scarcely taller than five foot, and dressed in a frock made from a rather shiny mauve material, a cream cardigan and low-heeled black shoes, a little scuffed at the toes. There was something smart, imposing, about her, though her clothes were obviously not new. Her face was very lined, the eyebrows plucked thin and their shape retraced by brown eyebrow pencil. Her demeanour was kind and intelligent, though her expression was temporarily clouded by suspicion. In Hebrew she said sharply, ‘What do you want here?’
David was paralysed. He simply didn’t know where to begin, and what he felt like doing most of all was running away. But he forced himself to move closer.
‘I . . .’ Stumblingly he organized some Hebrew words in his mind, then reminded himself to greet her. ‘Shalom . . . Are you Annaliese Mayer?’
She frowned. ‘Ken . . .’
Oh, God help me, David thought. This is it.
‘I am from England,’ he said slowly, his gaze never leaving her face. ‘My mother escaped to England from Berlin in 1939. Her name was Gerda Mayer. The name she gave to me was Rudi. I am Rudi Mayer.’
The woman just stared at him, eyes wide. Seconds passed. He could almost see the functioning of her mind. Then one hand went to her mouth, the other groping for the doorframe, and she took a step backwards, shaking her head.
‘Nein . . . Mein Gott, nein!’
His schoolboy German was still better than his Hebrew, and like her he reverted to it.
‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I have come to look for you, and for my father.’
She stared at him still. ‘But how . . .?’ She shook her head. ‘You died! She died . . . The place was bombed. We made enquiries after the war and they said everyone in that house was dead.’
‘They thought so. But I did not die. I was rescued.’
Annaliese’s face had gone pale. He could hear her short, sharp breaths. She moved towards him, cautious as if he might vanish at her touch like a soap bubble, eyes fixed on him in wonder. She reached out her hand and hesitantly David took it, feeling its cool, fragile skin.
‘You are truly the son of Gerda? Gerda’s little baby . . .’ She just couldn’t seem to take it in. David nodded, feeling a lump rise in his throat.
‘My father—’ His voice was husky. ‘Hermann – is he here?’
Her face crumpled for a moment, and, still holding him with one hand, in a guarded way she reached round and closed the door of the apartment.
‘Rudi,’ she whispered. ‘Little Rudi. She wrote us so very much about you. Gerda’s darling child.’ All at once he was clasped in her arms, and both of them were weeping. Annaliese kept pulling back to look at him, her tears flowing, reaching up to cup his face in her hands, to wipe his tears away, stroke his cheeks and hair, his strong arms and shoulders.
‘You are so tall, such a grown-up boy. I should have known when I saw you standing there,’ she told him through her tears. ‘You are so very like her – the eyes, the hair.’
David struggled to keep up with her German, but he understood from her gestures. ‘I have been told that.’ He tried to smile. This felt unreal, as if he was acting in a play.
‘Who told you this?’
‘The Jews who knew her in Birmingham.’
Annaliese nodded. ‘She told us that many people were kind to her.’ It took her some time to collect herself. At last, wiping her face with her handkerchief, she said, ‘You think I am strange not taking you inside. But Elena is doing a little cleaning, and Hermann, he is . . . Ah, but in fact, this is a good time now.’ She opened the door, cautiously and beckoned David inside. ‘He is listening to his radio programme. Come in. Come! You must tell me everything!’
The apartment was cool inside, and smelt of stone, rather like an English country church. David found himself standing on a small landing with doors leading off it. The sound of the radio came from a room to his left, and from somewhere else, probably the bathroom, he could hear water swishing and realized it must be the cleaner. The stone floor was partially covered with a red rectangular rug, and on the one available wall space was a painting in a gold frame
of a beautiful building, its roof topped by three ornate domes.
‘Beautiful, ja?’ Annaliese said. ‘This was painted by my uncle in the 1920s – it is the Synagogue Fasenenstrasse, a place your mother knew very well.’ She gave a painful sigh. ‘It was burned in the pogrom in November 1938. All the beautiful roof – gone.’ She touched his back gently. ‘Come into the kitchen – you will have coffee and some cake?’
The kitchen was small and quite bare, with a sink, two metal chairs pushed under a table topped with pale yellow Formica and a very large refrigerator. Annaliese ordered him to sit at the table while she made coffee.
‘We have a while yet – his programme will end at eleven o’clock.’
The kitchen clock said twenty to eleven. David was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the kind of reference he had heard so far to his father. The thought of coming face to face with him seemed frightening.
Annaliese paused for a moment, in the middle of spooning coffee. Her agitation was obvious.
‘I wonder if you should go away. If I should take a little time to prepare Hermann. His health is not so good, you understand? Could you come back tomorrow?’
David explained that he had to return to Kibbutz Hamesh that afternoon.
‘I see.’ She poured boiling water. ‘Then we shall do our best.’
Sitting opposite him she handed him the rich coffee and offered a plate of lebkuchen.
‘So you speak German?’
‘I learned a bit at school – I am not good at it, as you can hear.’
‘No – you speak very well. And Hebrew?’
He took one of the little cakes from the plate. ‘I am on an Ulpan. Just a few weeks. So German is easier.’
‘OK. Gut.’ She smiled and caressed his shoulder. ‘Rudi . . . Little Rudi . . . I will speak simply so you can follow.’ She eyed the clock on the wall above them. ‘Soon Hermann’s programme will finish and he will want coffee. But I have to tell you about your father so that you understand.’ As she talked she fiddled with a gold ring on the middle finger of her right hand. ‘Hermann – he is my younger brother. He is now forty-eight years old, though you will be surprised because he looks much older. This is because of what he suffered in the camps. He is not the man he was before the war. Not at all. Hermann had a scientific training. Because of this he stayed in Berlin longer than many Jews because he was employed in the armaments industry. But even those Jews who were of use in this way were deported in 1943. He left in summertime. Soon after, the Nazis declared Berlin to be Judenfrei. No Jews left, they said. This was even a lie because they let some of us stay. I was a nurse in the Jewish Hospital all through the war. And of course there were others in hiding. Hermann was taken first to the camp at Theresienstadt. We heard nothing from him from that day. Later, they started to move groups of them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. You know what is this?’
‘Of course.’ David felt himself tightening inside.
‘He was working for some months at Birkenau – in fact in one of the laboratories. Then he fell foul of one of the capos – some official – who sent him to the work parties outside. It was the Christmastime of 1944. Already his health was not good and after some weeks he fell ill. He was fortunate in this way: a few months earlier and he would have been sent straight to the gas chambers. Just a fortnight before, I heard, they had used the gas chambers in the camp for the last time – for a group of two thousand who had come on a transport from Theresienstadt. But the British and Russians were coming closer – they did not want their crimes to be seen. Many of them – even the sick, the starving – were made to leave the camp. They were to march to their deaths – through the rain and snow, day after day. But Hermann was sent with some others to the transit camp at Bergen-Belsen. You have seen pictures of Bergen-Belsen, ja? I do not need to tell you. At that time the camp was full of typhus, and Hermann caught it. When the British came into the camp in April 1945 he was very ill. A few more days . . .’ Annaliese shrugged, palms up. ‘Even then it was not finished. They moved him when still he was quite sick, to another camp on the Dutch border. I think this totally finished him – really.’
David saw her examine his face, checking that he was understanding everything.
‘Hermann was still quite a young man of course. He should have been in the prime of his life, but his health was broken. I am worried at his seeing you . . . But at the same time – such joy!’ She beamed, wiping her eyes again.
‘Have you been with him ever since?’
‘Ja.’ She spoke the word on a sharp intake of breath. ‘What could I do? Our parents and our sister died in Auschwitz – even before Hermann was taken there. I was never married. When we found each other we were the only family we had left, except for one uncle who was in the United States. We already knew that Gerda was dead. And you.’ Annaliese ran her eyes over him again, as if to confirm to herself that he was real, and gave a faint smile. ‘All we could think of was to leave. The very soil of Germany was stained with the blood of our people. We applied to come here, before the State was declared. Finally we arrived in 1947.’
In the pause when she finished speaking, both of them became aware of a new silence in the apartment. The radio had been switched off. In the hallway, a door opened. Annaliese gave David a meaningful look.
‘Your father does not speak of these things now. Nothing, ever. Just be calm, David. Let me talk to him.’
‘Anna? Annaliese?’
A shuffling, bedroom-slippered tread was heard on the landing.
Annaliese stood up. ‘I’m here, Hermann,’ she said soothingly. ‘In the kitchen. I have someone here I want you to meet.’
David got to his feet as well. His hands broke out in a nervous sweat and his heart was thumping like a drum. Don’t expect anything of him, he kept saying to himself. Just be calm.
The door squeaked open and Hermann Mayer shuffled into the room. David saw a thin man with wispy white hair standing on end like an aura round his head, face furrowed with lines and wide blue eyes, slightly rheumy, wearing a bewildered expression. He had a shirt on, buttons unfastened at the top to reveal a pale, almost hairless chest, the bones protruding, and no trousers, only a pair of long, sagging underpants. Pushed into the slippers were scrawny legs, the ankles discoloured and swollen. David boiled inside with pity. All he could think in that moment was not, this is my father, but, this man looks seventy-five – and he’s forty-eight years old.
‘Annaliese—’ Hermann said querulously. ‘I don’t know where is my newspaper.’
‘I’m sorry, Hermann.’ She spoke gently. ‘I have not been out yet. I will get your newspaper. But first . . .’ She went to her brother and took his arm between both her hands, caressing him, speaking in a low voice. David only managed to make out some of the words. ‘I have a surprise for you. A happy surprise . . . You must prepare yourself . . .’ After further gentle murmuring, from which David, trembling now, caught the words Gerda . . . Rudi he saw Hermann Mayer’s eyes drift towards him as if it was the first time he had noticed there was anyone else in the room.
‘Hermann—’ Annaliese led him forward. Smiling tenderly she told him, ‘This is your son, darling. This is little Rudi, Gerda’s boy. Your boy. He has been safe all this time, and he has come from England to find us.’
David saw the tremor in his own hands mirrored in those of the man before him. Hermann stood looking at him, helplessly. His face remained expressionless for a time, then for a second it contorted and David thought he was going to weep. But the spasm passed. Eventually, he held out his hand, and very formally, as if David was perhaps a new business associate, he said:
‘I am very pleased to meet you.’
Forty-Five
Kibbutz Hamesh
Galilee
June (Boiling hot!)
1958
Dear Mum and Frances,
. . . Every day seems to get hotter here! Today is already 31°C and they say it will get even worse by August! I wonder what it’s like at ho
me . . .
. . . I’ve got a new job though and am ‘lucky’ to be working inside. I’m not sure which is worse in this weather, inside or out. But the digging of the swimming pool is coming along gradually. I don’t know that I’ll be here to see it in action though! I’ve moved on from working in the hen house (believe me, you can have too much of the company of chickens) and am now being trained up in machine maintenance, which as you can imagine is close to my heart and I’m told I have a ‘flair’ for it! Some of the farm machinery here is very old and a real challenge to keep going . . .
. . . Last week I was able to go to Haifa overnight again. My father seemed even more unwell than before, though Annaliese says he is often like this. I asked her whether my visits upset him. I was frightened that it might damage him – more than he is damaged already. She says there has been some change but she believes it to be temporary, and there has not been any repetition of the upset on my first visit, when his emotion was so overpowering it was hard even to watch it. I think he is getting more used to me coming now. He is very dependent on my aunt for his day-to-day welfare and sometimes it seems he is more like her child than her brother. This time there was an outburst – not obviously connected with me but over something he had mislaid, which is the sort of thing which makes him very agitated. It was a terribly sad sight, seeing a man in such a state over a lost pair of spectacles. He does not talk about the camps at all, or what happened to him. The little information I told you was all from Annaliese. From what she says, he has never been able to have a normal life since he came here. He worked for a time as a postman, early on, but even that used to fill him with so much anxiety that he would come home early, weeping. Eventually he broke down in the street and couldn’t move. He was taken home by the police and he did not work again after that. He has talked to me sometimes about my mother and their life together in Berlin, and when he talks about her he weeps, very suddenly, tears gushing from his eyes, and is very affectionate to me. Later he can be more distant. It feels as if his mind is divided into completely separate compartments which barely touch each other.