Exodus, Revisited

by Deborah Feldman

  * * *

  • • •

  In that Spätsommer, that late summer, while I was falling in love with a person but also with a city, a life, and a possible future, I finally found an apartment of my own, a potential permanent address in Berlin, with my name on the contract and empty rooms to be filled with my own furniture and books and artwork. This felt like a very meaningful step in the right direction; in fact, only then did it become clear how unsettling it had been to practically squat, outside the realms of the law (of which I was only later informed), in an apartment under someone else’s name filled with someone else’s things, and so the move heralded a euphoric joy. I packed my few possessions back into the boxes I had used to ship them and transported them in shifts with a borrowed car. Friends came by to help me paint over the sickly green walls in the front bedroom, and when the work was finished, the fresh white coat gleamed in the sunlight streaming in from the enormous double-paned windows; the room itself felt fresh and clean and light, exactly how I felt in my own heart. A few days later, I woke up for the first time in that empty white room, and my eyes opened into the soft morning light and I glimpsed the many sturdy branches of the old plane tree growing right before my windows, the lush green leaves swaying to and fro in the breeze. For a brief moment I was in my childhood bedroom, nestled under the Hungarian comforter, sun illuminating the high white ceiling, listening to the creaking limbs of the enormous sycamore towering over our brownstone. And then I glimpsed the ornate facades of the prewar buildings behind the branches of the plane tree and I oriented myself back into time and space. Even then, just watching the bobbing branches, I knew it was a sign. It was what I had longed for five years ago as I had stood at the window of my small, dark apartment in Manhattan, looking down into the courtyard at the locust tree, knowing in the core of myself that everything was wrong and would have to be corrected. Now here was this great and bounteous tree, its rustling laugh trailing into my open window—for how else could I explain the journey of the last five years and where it had led me if it wasn’t some kind of supernatural guidance? It was the first indication of a phenomenon that would reveal itself to me over the coming year, that of the closed circle, of the parts made whole, of the narrative structure achieving perfect completion.

  7

  VERSÖHNUNG

  RECONCILIATION

  In the seventh year after my departure, I lost my language. I had commenced a relationship in a foreign tongue that I did not yet speak especially well. Nevertheless, it became the language in which I conducted most of my communications, and as a result, whenever I occasionally fell back into English it became clear that the near-native-level grasp I had struggled for so many years to achieve had now been meaningfully diminished. I was floating in between the two languages, and this state of being had an impact on my thoughts and feelings, on the way they were processed and perceived, how long this took, and how much effort it required. During this brief period of linguistic transition, I sometimes had difficulty understanding myself. I struggled to make sense of the confused vocabulary in my own head, of the mishmash of locutionary influences.

  Like many Germans, my boyfriend, Jan, spoke two versions of his native language, a regional-accented High German as well as a dialect local to the small area he had grown up in. He explained to me that where he came from, the difference in dialect could be quite marked even from village to neighboring village; he was able to tell, based on word choice, pronunciation, or intonation, not only the region someone hailed from, but sometimes the particular town as well. He gave me examples of words that were said one way in his hometown and a completely different way only five kilometers away, to a point where I had to wonder how the locals could possibly understand one another. Although he had moved to Berlin almost two decades earlier, he still had many opportunities to use this rarified dialect, for he had formed a circle of friends over the years who also came from the same area, and they regularly met with one another, dissolving into indistinct and rapid mumbles each time they did so. Except it wasn’t nearly as difficult for me to make sense of as it might have been for others, because the great irony was that this particular dialect had originated at the same time and in a similar region as Yiddish and therefore resembled it more than I had expected. Although I couldn’t speak what sounded like an odd, distorted version of my own first language, I could, to my surprise, understand everything that was being said. It was as if my brain, in the process of converting Yiddish to German, had constructed a kind of Rosetta stone for all related dialects, a way of understanding the relationship between the main language and its many illegitimate children. I had unique access to a universal cipher for Germanic languages; in my mind I could deconstruct words into associative parts and their respective images, and I could run a list of permutations as to the many possible pronunciations and constructions and still draw the connections between all of the versions as if by instinct.

  And yet I would soon discover, to my great surprise, that somewhere along the way my first language had slipped from my voluntary grasp. I could no longer isolate Yiddish at will. This was partly, I surmised, because I had gone so many years without speaking it and partly because I had, in a sense, traded in the language of my childhood for the language of my future. I did not desire to lose my first language per se, and the reason for this certainly had something to do with feelings of guilt and cultural obligation, but another more basic reason was the fear of somehow losing an integral part of myself in that process. Had I been at this time surrounded by other Yiddish speakers, the situation might have turned out differently; as it was, however, while my fluency and comfort level in German increased, I began to feel as if Yiddish was sinking deeper and deeper through the levels of my consciousness into the quicksand of my unconscious memory, permanently removed from my express dominion. Most of the time I was unable to control the recall process at all; instead it occurred independently of my efforts, at odd moments, in unpredictable flashes. Watching a film in Yiddish, or hearing a song, could often bring back individual words in stunning clarity, with all the memories and powerful emotions associated with them, but often those were painful experiences, and I drew back as if from a flame.

  Meanwhile, the new words I was learning in this strange process of replacement began to attract their own aureoles of associations, memories, and feelings, much in the way the acquisition of new words in any language is bound to do. But for me there was an additional layer to this process, because with each new word acquired that shared a relationship with a word from my past, I merged old associations with new ones, and each term became a layered emotional experience, for underneath that instinct to avoid the past and its pitfalls, I began to realize that a part of me had been yearning for just such a reconciliation all along.

  I remember during this time that Jan and I occasionally made a game of comparing unique words in our various native languages; he would put forth an old, forgotten term that no longer existed in German and I would offer the Yiddish equivalent, and vice versa. Often they were the same; sometimes in Yiddish the word would have been replaced by an Eastern European, Hebrew, or Aramaic term; but more likely there would be a harmonious counterpart. I would ask him how a certain word was pronounced and was surprised to hear the similarity; he would use whole phrases that I would suddenly recall from my childhood. While I was lying next to him one lazy morning, I thought of this magical link between us that this fusion of language represented, and I asked him if he recognized the Yiddish word iberbetn, which would be equivalent to the High German Überbitten. He wrinkled his forehead at this one, trying to draw the connections from memory.

  As I told him, I remembered the word now with its full weight, and it struck me that it really was a marvelous concept for which an equivalent did not exist in any other language that I knew of. Originally, a few hundred years ago, the word iberbetn had simply meant to beg someone’s forgiveness—in an Old German dictionary from the early nineteenth c
entury you can find the definition jemanden mit Bitten zu überwinden, a rough translation meaning “to overcome someone with beseechment,” which is quite similar—but over time it had evolved into a very important ritual, central to everyday life in our community. I remembered as a child being told by my teachers to resolve a squabble with a fellow classmate: “Betet euch jetzt iber,” she admonished us, and we were immediately compelled to make our peace. We had learned at a very young age that there were two forms of sin, that of ben adam le’chavero, and that of ben adam l’Hashem, literally between man and his peers and between man and God, and the only way for us to convince God to judge us mercifully for our sins against him was to judge our peers mercifully for their sins against us. So if one suspected one had sinned against one’s fellow man, one simply approached this person and expressed one’s intention sich iberzubeten, at which point the basic obligation to forgive had already been imposed on the one approached. This was the case because the Talmud said that God was so merciful to his subjects as to be moved to compassion not at the point at which a prayer was issued, but at the moment when the lips were parted in the intention of doing so—meaning the compassion was issued in advance. Now, if God behaved so to man, then man must emulate God and do the same, and this meant to forgive the other even before the apology had been expressed. Over time, this came to mean that no apologies had to be made at all, and it was enough to simply express the intention, to say the magic word, and immediately there would be the swift and effusive insistence that it was hardly necessary, that no, in fact, the other was the one with the obligation, and before any regret or mercy had been articulated, a true, warm, and authentic reconciliation between the two had already been established.

  By the time I was growing up in late-twentieth-century Williamsburg, the ritual had become something of a safety button, a mantra we repeated daily as if to protect ourselves from any overlooked sin. We performed it obsessively, as if perhaps tomorrow we would no longer have the opportunity and the accounting between us would be left unresolved; we made the rounds on fast days and before important holidays, asking our friends and neighbors if we had in some way, without our knowledge, hurt or disappointed them. And each time, regardless of whether this offense had been registered on behalf of the offender or not, an absolute pardon was offered generously and quickly, for each of us wanted to merit exactly the same treatment from God in regard to our sins against him. We were only too happy to pay this price of letting go of old grudges, relinquishing accounts, dissipating corrosive resentments. Perhaps those resentments did occasionally return—at the very least certain grudges proved more stubborn than we would have liked—but the consistent practice of this ritual would eventually prove more potent, and as we offered verbal absolution over and over, the repetitiveness would eventually render its impact more effectively, and we would not just perform but actually feel the forgiveness that we so dutifully expressed.

  Now, lying in bed next to this man, who was probably no more or less German than the rest of his countrymen, whose family history and cultural legacy were both thoroughly average and perfectly exemplary, I reflected on the fact that there was something unausgesprochen, unspoken, as well in our own coming together, for unlike in my last relationship, I had not put us through the ringer of that revenge/penance dynamic; I had not forced him to assuage my guilt or satisfy my primitive lust for revenge. I had not compelled him to perform atonement for the history of his country or for the choices and actions of his ancestors. The intentions had been made clear when we had accepted each other’s whole selves; it was as if we had leapt over the whole complex process in a single moment, and now we had landed at the other side of mercy.

  The concept of iberbetn was so pronounced in my community that it became a general term for any form of unlikely concord, a way to describe conflicts and contradictions that were resolved not by reason but by faith. Was it not some kind of mysterious miracle that I was beginning to sense my own self taking form, here in this most unlikely of places, in the most improbable of circumstances? All along I had thought I was seeking forgiveness from my grandmother; now I realized I had been only trying to forgive myself. I had been trying to find a way to be happy despite the shame and the guilt and the grief, and now it was as if I had sewn them all into one cloth, and in their harmonious proximity to one another, the emotions took on different attributes.

  * * *

  • • •

  Life in a foreign country takes on a new light when one acquires easy use of the language and has formed meaningful relationships with the locals. My new partner and I traveled together frequently and undertook many trips with our children, and having him as a companion and guide meant developing a more intimate and true understanding of what everyday life as a Berliner was like. Everything was going wonderfully, to the point where I had begun to forget about all my prior prejudices and disappointments, and I began to believe that from now on my life here would always be this idyllic. Everything felt so simple; I was in love with a good man and the world was ours to conquer together. I was finally living in the present instead of the past, and I must have convinced myself that I had exorcised all my demons, or at least was heading in that direction.

  It was a rainy Sunday morning, and we had arrived early at the Spaßbad, a popular indoor/outdoor pool complex in Oranienburg. I was there with my son and with Jan and his two children. We headed straight for the slides, which Jan had warned would be choked with long lines later in the afternoon. After we had all had our share of shrieking fun, we retreated to the lounge chairs we had laid claim to upon our arrival. The children splashed before us in the wave pool. At one point Jan got up to issue a safety warning to one of them; upon his return, he mentioned casually to me as he settled back into his chair, “There’s a Nazi in the swimming pool.”

  There was some context for that casual mention. I’d told him at an earlier point in our relationship that I still did not quite know how to recognize a Nazi myself. I was looking for skinheads but kept confusing them with punks. Nazis looked different today, he’d informed me then, pointing one out while we strolled through his bourgeois-bohemian neighborhood in the former East Berlin one sunny afternoon. I had turned around to see a young couple in combat boots, ripped biker clothing, piercings, and tattoos. The kind of kids I’d seen before on the street in San Francisco or New Orleans. Not the association I would have made. Rockers, maybe street kids, but not Nazis. “How’d you know for sure?” I’d asked. But he just did.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Nazi Jan spotted in the pool was Marcel Zech, whose name would pop up in news reports all over the world soon after. But on that day, he was just a guy enjoying the weekend with his kid and some friends. I would notice those friends later on by their identifying characteristics, because on that day, I finally did learn how to tell a Nazi from a punk, a rocker, or a street kid. “How do you know?” I’d asked Jan, peering in the direction of the pool, and he’d answered clearly this time: “Iron cross on his ankle, black sun on his arm, Reich eagle on his chest, und so weiter . . .”

  My jaw dropped, but Jan just shrugged. “At least he didn’t put a swastika underneath the wings; he just left that spot empty, framing his belly button.” I got up and tried to walk casually to the edge of the pool, waving to my son as he splashed happily. I looked for the man with the tattoos Jan had mentioned. Many of the people there were heavily tattooed, so it was initially difficult to pinpoint the person Jan had been referring to, but then, so suddenly I thought my heart had stopped, there was a torso right in front of me, thick and spilling over the edge of a pair of too-tight bathing trunks. I saw the quote first. Jedem das Seine, “to each his own.” I had seen it before, on an entrance to a concentration camp. But then, like a second blow, I saw the detailed sketch of the entrance to Auschwitz right on top, sprawling across a meaty lower back. I blinked, looked again. There it was, the barbed wire, the distinctive entry gate, even the
brick detail.

  I rushed back to my chair. “He’s got a concentration camp! On his back!” I said breathlessly. “And the quote! Oh my God! Did you see that too?” Jan hadn’t seen it. He looked over in the man’s direction, squinting with effort. I was horrified, indignant, boiling with humiliation, anger, and fear. I looked around me, trying to see if others had noticed what I had noticed, if they too were talking among themselves in shocked and horrified tones. But the people around me appeared serene and relaxed.

  “I can’t just sit here and do nothing, I can’t!” I argued heatedly. “I need to do something!”

  When I realized that a man like that could frolic undisturbed while the tattoo on his back expressed support for the genocidal campaign that had eliminated all of my grandmother’s relatives, I felt quite possibly the smallest and most powerless I have ever felt.

  I think I scared Jan that day. I think the depth of my emotions scared him. I think he assumed they would make me capable of deeply irrational actions. We had a fight then. He yelled, he said some things he would later regret, and I saw the fear (fear of me!) in his eyes. We sat down to lunch with our children only two tables away from this man and his group of thugs, all similarly decorated with eagles and crosses and suns, and when my son asked me what was wrong, I told him simply that there were some bad people there that believed Hitler was right.

  “Well, Mom, you should just ignore them!” he said, giving me the same advice he’d heard me dispense about schoolyard bullies. I looked at him and wondered painfully what kind of lesson I was teaching him that day, about confronting evil instead of looking the other way. I sighed and nodded and pushed my food around my plate.