The Iron Tracks
Page 9
Since his return, Rabbi Zimmel has not left the place. If a wandering Jew finds his way there, he feeds him, lodges him in one of his rooms, and shows him the many books in the library. I first arrived there in 1952, confused, weary, and lost.
I hurried to reach him before dark.
It’s good that you came, he told me with his eyes, from which a faint light glimmered. I sat next to his bed and tried to hear. With his eyes he gestured toward a letter on the table. Among other things, it said: In the adjoining room are iron boxes. Put the books in them and send them to Jerusalem.
To overcome my fear I revealed to him that I intended to go to Weinberg to take the life of the murderer. What would happen after that was not important. Hearing those words, his eyes opened wide. It was evident from them that he had caught something of my meaning. It was important that Rabbi Zimmel know I had not shirked my duty.
The doctor entered, and I retired to the next room. The doctor asked no questions of his patient, and the patient did not complain. That silence glued me to the wall. When the doctor left I asked, “How is the Rabbi?” He bowed his head and said, “God is our savior.” I wanted to chide him. A doctor is not a rabbi. From him we expect practical words. I restrained myself. The doctor went out into the darkness as I watched.
When I entered his room, Rabbi Zimmel’s eyes were open. I told him about Max and August, and asked him not to worry, because Max’s hand was open and generous, and the place remained dear to him. The rabbi apparently absorbed what I said, and a smile played on his lips.
I went out and lit the candelabrum in the synagogue. When I was a child, Grandfather wanted to attract me to prayer but didn’t know how. Grandmother would read the prayers with me, and I was certain that only women knew how to pray. For many days I sat here and read with Rabbi Zimmel. His way of reading was marvelous, as if he were touching a fruit and smelling its perfume. We read the Bible, Mishnah, and Midrash.
All these years Rabbi Zimmel sat and wrote the history of the place and of the Zimmel family, which hadn’t left Sandberg for about seven hundred years. His forefathers had written many books: about Jewish law, ethics, Biblical exegesis, and Kabbalah. A person could spend his entire life here and manage to study only a few of the treasures they had left behind.
It was a few years ago, when he had finished listing the books and preparing a full bibliography, that he decided to pack them up and send them to Jerusalem. But he was prevented from doing so from on high. First he fell ill, and when he got well, nightmares disturbed his sleep. His ancestors were not pleased with his decision. He struggled with them in his sleep, and in the end they prevailed: he did not ship the books to Jerusalem, nor did he himself go there.
It was hard to make him talk about that, but about other things he would willingly speak. In the beginning of the previous century about twenty Jewish families had lived here. Their solid stone houses still stand. On our nightly walks he told me many things about them, a marvelous group of merchants and sages. Mobs sometimes attacked them and drove them out, but they would return and rebuild the ruins. Now smoke rose from the houses; the peasants were eating supper, and a dense tranquility hung like mist over the meadows, as if this were how it had always been.
I telephoned Max and asked him to come. His devotion to Rabbi Zimmel was complete. Whenever he had a free hour, he came here and brought fruit, vegetables, and dairy products. Like his ancestors, Rabbi Zimmel was a vegetarian.
Meanwhile, the rabbi beckoned me. I approached his bed. He gestured toward the iron chests with his eyes, and I promised him that I would pack the books. Together with Max, I would send them to Jerusalem.
Then Max arrived. A new light shone in Rabbi Zimmel’s eyes. The three of us sat in silence. Suddenly Max turned to me and asked, “Did you practice?”
“I shot two magazines,” I answered, surprised by his question.
“You should practice every month.” He spoke in a language not his own.
“I don’t have many chances.”
“You must.”
He had never spoken to me like that before. I wanted to turn to him and say, Dear brother, why are you pressing me in this difficult hour? He looked at me angrily and said, “I practice once a week.”
That very night Rabbi Zimmel died. Max wept, and I didn’t know how to console him. Words that weren’t my own arose within me, and I said, “Rabbi Zimmel has completed his task in this world, and now he has been gathered unto his ancestors. His life was clear and unstained.” Max didn’t respond to my words. His face darkened, and his forehead became clouded. We buried Rabbi Zimmel in the cemetery next to his forefathers, and together we recited, “God, full of mercy.” Then we sat in the buffet and drank stale coffee.
I thought of telling him about Nachtigel, but I restrained myself. I felt that I must perform that duty without asking help from anyone. Max’s expression was frightening. Large furrows settled into his face and deepened, and his lower lip trembled. Suddenly he got up and said loudly, “I must go home.” I wanted to detain him, but he was determined.
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Dizzy and empty, I boarded the night local and set out on my way. Across from me sat a short, clumsy woman with a blank smile on her lips. I told her that a few hours before I had buried a man very close to me. Upon hearing my words, her smile twisted. She covered her mouth with her right hand.
“Where?” she asked in obvious surprise.
“Here,” I said, and I saw before my eyes the two robust peasants who dug the grave, and Max standing there wearing a yarmulke, pressing the prayer book to his breast with both hands. After the burial we walked through the harvested fields. No one was there. We crossed the brook and stood in a deserted clearing surrounded by leafless trees. Max looked taller than usual. His head was slightly bent, and his mouth was open, as if he had just realized that life passes and people dear to us depart in untimely fashion, that remaining behind is difficult and meaningless.
“Sandberg is cursed,” said the woman in a clear, unpleasant voice.
“Were you hurt there, too?”
“I will never go to Sandberg again.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone there hates me.” She had the growl of an animal that has escaped from its cage. Her open, cloudy eyes were flooded with fear, and it was clear that just a short time ago she had been within the reach of her pursuers.
“Do you have family there?” I ask.
“I have three sisters, three witches, who make me miserable.”
“What do they want from you?”
“For me to get married. I don’t want to get married, I want to live as I please, without a husband and children.”
“That’s understandable.”
“But not to my pious sisters. They’re sure I’m a loose woman. I’m not. I’m just looking for some peace, nothing more.” In the past women like her would fall right into my arms. A woman in flight has no complaints. She’s submissive and devoted and asks only for a little affection, a sandwich, and travel money. After the night, you forget her easily. As for the one sitting before me, the pathetic quarrel with her sisters gave her face the look of an abandoned animal. Her stubby fingers, which looked cut off, covered her mouth repeatedly.
“You don’t have to get married,” I told her.
“It’s too bad my sisters can’t hear you.” The words left her mouth heavily and crudely.
“I’m prepared to say it to them.”
Hearing those words, she whimpered, “No one understands me. They hunt me down like a rabbit. I’m not a rabbit.” Her disheveled face expressed foolishness and pain, and she repeated, “I’m not a rabbit, I don’t want to be hunted.”
I talked to her the way I talk with all women, with words that have a hint of flattery and a pinch of pretense. I even told her she was pretty. The words did their work. She wiped the tears from her face and her peasant features were revealed in all their coarseness.
“What are you doing her
e?” she asked.
“I’m a peddler.”
She apparently didn’t catch the meaning of the word and said, “It’s good you weren’t born in that accursed place. They’ll pursue me the rest of my life.”
“In a year or two your sisters will get old and leave you alone.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
She bowed her head as if she were about to kneel. I chided her, “You mustn’t kneel. Life is hard, but you’ve got to stand straight. Standing straight is what makes us human beings.” She was startled and apologized.
I remembered Max again. The words he had spoken seeped into me, and only now did I feel their sting. Nor had his departure been ordinary. He hadn’t said, Come back to me soon, as he used to, but “I’ve got to go.” As if he’d been summoned to someplace unpleasant. I wanted to call out, Don’t go, sit with me until the fury passes. But for some reason it felt wrong to detain him, and I let him go.
When we neared Steinberg, I got to my feet and said, “I must get off here.”
“Are you leaving me?” She opened her expressionless eyes.
“I have to get off. There are things that a man has to do, and soon.”
“Too bad,” she said, frightened.
I took off my wristwatch and said, “Allow me to give you this watch. It isn’t expensive, but it brings good luck.” She took the watch and began to kiss my hands wildly, as if to show me what her mouth could do in a moment of passion.
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I reached Steinberg toward evening. The distance from Steinberg to the murderer’s house is forty kilometers. I got off here because I wanted to build up some courage, to rest, and to remember a sight that had slipped from my memory. I got off without emotion and went into the buffet. I have learned that hidden things are often revealed in strange and neglected places. I had two drinks and immediately saw Rabbi Zimmel’s face. During the past two years he had been completely absorbed in preserving and rebinding his books. He studied just an hour or two a day, and devoted the rest of his strength to his labors. He did the work quietly and with great precision.
The buffet emptied, and I set off on my way. I have a few secret lodgings in the area, where, in the past, I used to hide out and sleep for a few days without interruption. A lot of snow can fall in this season, but this year there has only been frost. In this remote place I picked up the murderer’s trail. Here, a few years ago, in a wretched inn called “Schneeweiss,” a group of retired officers held a memorial party. I could see them from my room, strutting about and calling one another not by name but by rank. Then I heard Nachtigel’s name for the first time.
At first the landlady looked askance at me, but when she saw that I read newspapers, she changed her mind. She told me that her husband had fallen as a hero in the East, and her two sons had been drafted a few months before the end of the war and had perished in bombings. Since then, whenever I return here, she tells me the same story. Her pain seems to have faded by now, but she continues to repeat the story obsessively. Five years ago I brought a woman here with me, not a very pretty one, whom I found on the train. After that the landlady stopped speaking to me. Last year I couldn’t restrain myself, and I said to her, “If my presence disturbs you, I won’t come anymore.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she said and burst into tears.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s hard for me to bear having a prostitute in the house.”
“She wasn’t a prostitute. She was a widow.” I raised my voice.
“Pardon me,” she said, and shrank behind the counter.
After that she no longer said “prostitutes,” but “certain women,” and she was pleased with herself for having outwitted me. It’s hard for me to bear her muttering, and more than once I’ve been tempted to skip her inn, but the thought of the broad bed, the high window covered with an embroidered curtain, the two landscapes hanging above the bed, make me change my mind. The room infuses me with the desire for deep slumber. I sleep without interruption, getting up only for meals.
This time, when she saw that I had come alone, she was obviously pleased and said, “The room is waiting for you, sir.” Without delay, without becoming tangled in her words, I went upstairs. The room was just as I had left it a year ago. The bed, the writing table, the armchair. I was moved at the sight of these orderly, mute objects, which looked as if they expected me.
At dinner a retired railroad conductor sat next to me. He downed a few drinks and subsided into nostalgia. He spoke of the days when he was a young soldier, fighting on the Eastern Front, of the cold, of enjoying a good meal, and of feeling that he was bringing salvation to the world.
“How?” I wondered.
“We killed Jews. It was dreadful work, but very necessary. Work that brought relief to the soul. True, at first you were repelled by the screams, but little by little you learned that you were doing something important.”
“Not all of them were killed.”
“You’re wrong. We went from village to village and from hiding place to hiding place. We didn’t leave a trace. That was an exhausting mission, a dirty mission, but we did our duty to the end.”
He also told me that when he was captured by the Russians, he learned that his wife, whom he loved, and to whom he was devoted, had not been faithful to him during the war. She had slept with old men and boys and shamelessly violated the sanctity of their marriage. Fortunately, he was a prisoner for only a short time. He returned to the village and killed her without hesitation. In the village they were sure the Russians had done it. “Why contradict them?” he said coarsely. “The main thing is that she was killed, right? An unfaithful woman deserves a violent death. A violent death befits her.” A yellow glow flooded his ruddy face.
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The next morning I rose early and continued on my journey. I knew that I had to make my way to Weinberg on foot and on my own. The morning was gray. Light snowflakes fell on the hills but did not stick. I had made this trip more than once. Here, I had bought books and treasures. I had met people and rested in pensions. In the winter months I would drag from village to village as if in night-marish sleep. This time it was different: as if a yoke had been removed from me.
Near a tall tree I saw my mother sitting in an old armchair, a cigarette in her mouth, examining me with a questioning gaze. What will become of you? Your reading is faulty, and your writing is full of mistakes. Unlike my father, she believed that a person must study the great books well. My refusal to attend school hurt her. In those years I was drawn to Father, to his adventures and visions. Night after night I would sit and watch the small bands he would send from his hiding place to set fire to forests and factories. The arsonists, upon returning from their missions, would be covered with dust. Their eye sockets would be black, and malicious joy would sparkle in their gaze. Thus Father sought to release the region from its suffering.
Mother did not take part in party activities after the assassination. Were it not for some friends from her youth, she would have sunk into total isolation. Most of the time she sat and read. I was unable to appreciate her nobility. I was sure that she was wasting her time on nothing, avenging herself on Father. I was sure that she no longer believed in reforming society. Her silence stifled me. I would flee the house, roam the streets, and take up with Ruthenian boys. More than once I returned home wounded and bleeding. Mother would care for me quietly and patiently, as if I weren’t her rebellious son but a creature to be pitied. When Father came to take me, I didn’t kiss her on the forehead but ran to him, as if fleeing an oppressive place.
During the war the Ruthenians drove him from his hiding place. He was forced outdoors in a short, tattered coat, blinded by the daylight. For weeks we wandered through the fields, seeking the charity of his friends. Everyone shunned him or refused to open the door. At night we would sleep in barns or abandoned pens. Father blamed no one, nor did he make excuses.
One morning a truck drove up and two Germans seized us. They forced us onto the truck, kicking and beating us. “That’s that,” Father said, as if relieved. I was fifteen. I saw for the first time that he was a head shorter than I.
Thus we arrived in Nachtigel’s camp. It was a small, brutal labor camp, where people died from cold and hard work. To our surprise we found Mother there. She was wearing a long dress and a thick sweater, and clods of mud clung to her boots. She was glad to see us and spoke to us both. She said it was especially tough for Communists there. Everyone avoided them, picked on them, and reminded them of their deeds. The Germans and Ukrainians beat people without making distinctions. Nachtigel executed people daily. I, it turned out, was stronger than my parents.
I worked, loading coal like a trained laborer. Father, too, worked at this, without falling behind. His companions in hard labor didn’t forget his past. At every opportunity they would remind him that he was a fanatic, that he had joined the Ruthenians and would send them into the Jewish streets to steal and loot. Father didn’t reply. One morning Nachtigel shot him because he came late to the lineup. Mother worked in the sewing shop, and at night she would bring me pieces of bread at great risk. I asked her not to do it, but she wouldn’t listen. One night she, too, was shot, near the fence.
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