Broken Leaves of Autumn

by Eli Hai

  The break in the rain had reached its end, and it started pouring again. Soaked to his bones, and panting from the long, exhausting walk, he knocked on his friend’s front door. Miriam, Ahron’s wife, dressed so modestly that Jeff thought it was completely over-the-top, welcomed him hospitably. Hanna’le, Ahron’s four-year-old daughter, rushed toward him happily, jumped into his wet lap, and screeched joyfully, “Uncle Jeff, Uncle Jeff, I’m so happy you came!”

  “Sweetheart, I’m glad I came, too,” he said and lifted the child from his lap so as not to get her Shabbat clothes wet.

  “Oy, you’re so wet! Here, wipe yourself off.” Miriam rushed to bring him a large, fluffy towel.

  Jeff took the towel and wiped his hair. After doing that, Hanna’le ran to the armoire in the living room, took a large black yarmulke out of one of the drawers, and returned to him. Jeff bent down and allowed the young girl to put the black skullcap on his head.

  “You don’t have to put on a yarmulke. Don’t let that little rascal control you,” Ahron said, and didn’t bother to hide his pleasure from the unique bond between the tall, muscular man and his mischievous little daughter.

  “No problem. It doesn’t bother me, and you can see for yourself how happy it makes her,” Jeff said. He picked up the toddler and lifted her high as she screamed with joy.

  “I brought something to make the meal a success,” he said and held out a bottle of red wine. “Strictly kosher. And the wine made its way here on foot” He smiled at Ahron and Miriam.

  Ahron took the bottle and looked at the label. “Indeed, very strictly kosher. I also believe that you walked over here, but unfortunately, I’m not sure if according to the Halacha, we can drink wine received from the hands of a gentile. I’ll ask the rabbi, and if he approves, I promise I’ll use the wine for the kiddush next Shabbat.”

  “Don’t take offense, my friend,” he said when he saw the hurt look on Jeff’s face. “In Judaism, there’s logic in everything. Things aren’t decided randomly. Sometimes, even we common folk don’t understand why things are done in a certain way. We do as the adjudicators decree and don’t ask questions. Accept things simply, as well. Your intentions were good, and that’s what matters.”

  A troubled silence fell on the living room and only Hanna’le’s shrieks, while still in Jeff’s arms, pierced the silence.

  “Now, leave Jeff be and go get your chair because everyone is sitting down to eat,” instructed Miriam in an attempt to ease the atmosphere.

  “Are you all right, my friend?” Ahron asked.

  “I’m fine. I’m sorry. I don’t always think how the other side will accept things. I always expect people to act according to my logic, and what can you do that my logic doesn’t always work as it should?” Jeff recovered.

  “I understand. Let’s forget about it and sit down to eat. I’m very hungry. Look, the table is full of delicious treats,” Ahron smiled.

  Before they sat down to eat, Ahron said the kiddush. Then they washed their hands, and only then, did they sit down to eat. At the end of the meal, everyone sang songs, and although Jeff didn’t understand a word, he found the singing pleasant. Sometimes, he’d find himself humming some of the songs sung at the Shabbat meals, those that he remembered from previous times. After they had finished singing, Ahron said the Birkat HaMazon, the “Grace after Meals.” Immediately after that, everyone abandoned the table and moved to the spacious sofa in the living room. Miriam served tea, and they all drank with pleasure.

  “What are those songs you sing at the table?” Jeff asked curiously.

  “Those are the Shabbat songs. In these songs, we express the delight we get from that particular day. It’s important for us to convey that same delight around the dinner table. This way, we thank God for the food we eat and the day of rest he so kindly gave us. This is what we call oneg Shabbat, which means Shabbat entertainment,” Ahron replied contentedly, enjoying the conversation that evolved on the subject of the holy day.

  “And why don’t you sing in English?”

  “The songs are a combination of Hebrew and Yiddish, that’s the reason. It’ll sound strange to you, but there are Hebrew words in the song that I, myself, when I sing them, don’t always understand. Funny, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve heard of Hebrew, but Yiddish? Does that even exist?”

  “Yiddish is the language the Jews spoke in Europe in order to distinguish themselves from the Gentiles,” Ahron explained.

  Jeff still thought Jewish customs were weird.

  Why didn’t they eat all types of meat? And why wasn’t television one of the Shabbat’s entertainments? Ahron was talking about Shabbat entertainment, and was there anything more entertaining than a good TV show in the evening?

  “Are there no televisions in all Jewish homes?” Jeff asked.

  “No,” Ahron laughed. “Unfortunately, there are Jews who aren’t religious and don’t maintain the sanctity of the Shabbat. They have a television, which they watch on the Shabbat. But we belong to the Ultra-Orthodoxy, a sect of Judaism, and we think it’s a corrupting appliance.”

  “The computer is also a corrupting influence. I heard children can watch profanity on it, God forbid, and the television shows shallow programs that don’t contribute a thing to the education of children,” Miriam contributed her opinion to the discussion.

  “That’s true,” Jeff admitted. “A large part of the programs shown are utter garbage, and children are better off not watching them. Even I get bored sometimes from programs that tons of people are crazy about. But there are other programs you can learn from, for example from the Discovery channel and National Geographic.”

  “Right, but there’s always the risk that things will get out of control and children will prefer the forbidden things. For the avoidance of doubt, it’s better without the television and computer,” Ahron tried to wrap up the discussion, which displeased him.

  “I, for example, never watched television, and I don’t feel that there’s something missing in my life,” Miriam supported her husband’s argument.

  “I don’t believe it! How’s that possible? Not even incidentally, while wandering in a shopping center, for instance?” Jeff persisted.

  Miriam shook her head. “I don’t go to shopping centers! Those places are also corrupting! Of course, I’ve seen a television, but I’ve never watched a program, not even once.”

  “So how do you keep up to date with what’s happening in the world, and how do you commemorate and watch your joyful occasions if you have no television and computer?” Jeff wondered.

  “We can listen to the news on the radio in the car. And important events, we videotape and keep on a cassette. But we mostly take pictures, like in the old days. There’s no better way to preserve the past,” said Ahron, who’d had enough of the conversation. He got up and went to the armoire, where he opened a drawer and took out three big albums. “This is our wedding album, this is our girls’ album. In the third album, are the pictures of my extended family. Here you can also find pictures of the family pre-World War II.”

  Ahron placed two albums on the table and gave Jeff the third.

  Jeff looked through the album and examined the older ones.

  Pictures from the past, especially from WWII, fascinated him. Something in the fading images intrigued him. More than once, he wondered what his life would’ve looked like had he been born in the nineteenth century. He probably would’ve been a farmer, lived in a wood cabin, raised vegetables, and gathered hay to feed his cows. From time to time, he would’ve taken his wagon and ridden into town to buy provisions. And when he’d returned home, his wife, short and stout, wearing a long dress covered with a white apron, would’ve welcomed him with a smile. When he thought about life in the past, he always felt as though he’d have been better off living then.

  He paused on one of the pictures. Ahron rushed to explain with undisguised pleasure, “That’s my big sister and her two children. And this is my brother Shimon, who did Aliyah to Israe
l. Now he lives in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem.” He said the word “Aliyah” in Hebrew.

  “What’s an Aliyah?” Jeff asked curiously, while he continued to study the images, which seemed to look back at him in amazement.

  “Every Jew, who chooses to immigrate to Israel, the land of the Jews, makes Aliyah,” Ahron explained.

  “Interesting picture,” Jeff said, pointing at a big picture that portrayed the faces of three young, pretty girls, wearing tattered clothes. Their light eyes were sad and anxious. They were very similar, and Jeff assumed they were sisters. In the background, old houses crowded side by side. The picture was so old, that the black and white had faded into a blurry gray.

  “This picture was taken in Ghetto Warsaw during WWII. You can see how frightened they are, the poor girls,” Miriam contributed.

  “Who are these girls?” Jeff asked.

  “These are the Kaminsky sisters. This one is Gietel, my grandmother, may she be of blessed memory. My father’s mother. She passed away three years ago. This is her young sister, Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel, may she live a long life, abandoned our way of life. She immigrated to Israel right after the war, married there, and until this day, she lives on a kibbutz. She must be seventy, maybe more. The last time I saw her was five years ago. She came to our wedding,” Ahron explained at length.

  “What’s a kibbutz?” Jeff lifted his head and looked at his friend questioningly.

  “It’s a communal way of life that exists in Israel, similar to a way of life that existed in what was once the USSR,” Ahron said curtly. He didn’t like going into long explanations about the secular, abominable lifestyle customary in the Holy Land.

  “And who’s the third girl?” Jeff pointed at the thin girl, who out of all three, looked most tormented. Her face looked tense and portrayed profound sadness.

  “Ach,” Ahron sighed. “That’s Hanna, Grandma Gietel’s twin. The Nazis, damn them, transferred the Jews to the concentration camps, and took her, too. We don’t know what happened to her. She was probably taken to the gas chambers, where she died. My little Hanna’le, may she live a long and prosperous life, carries her name.”

  Jeff had some general knowledge about the mass murdering that the Nazis committed against the Jews, Gypsies, and others. In school, he learned a bit about WWII and the Nazis’ cruel massacre of the Jews. He’d also heard that most of the executions were done in the gas chambers, but in school, they didn’t go into detail. He never gave much thought to the tragedy that occurred during the war. Why would he? It had happened many years before he was born and thousands of miles from where he grew up. Even if the victims had been Christians, he wouldn’t have given it much thought. But now, staring at the tormented faces of those innocent, helpless girls, he felt something deep inside. He felt acute distress settling on him.

  “Tell me more about those death camps,” he requested.

  “The Nazis, damn them, decided on an act called The Final Solution. Mass systematic destruction of the Jews. Not another random killing, but an organized genocide. Almost all of Europe’s Jews were put on trains and taken to labor and death camps, built especially for that purpose. The minute they were taken off the train, they were stripped of their clothes and taken to the gas showers, where they suffocated to death. Then, the bodies were taken to the incinerators. So, ruthlessly, women and men, children and the elderly…”

  “Gas showers? I’m not sure I understand,” Jeff said, horrified.

  “Yes, showers that the Nazis, damn them, inserted gas into, instead of water. You understand? Instead of water coming out, gas did. The epitome of evil,” Miriam said.

  “And they didn’t resist?” Jeff wondered.

  “When they boarded the trains, they were told they were taken to labor camps. Some, those who were healthy and strong, really were taken to the labor camps. Those taken to labor camps had a number tattooed on their arm. My uncle has a number like that to this day. The others, who were ‘useless,’ were instantly taken to the showers,” Miriam explained.

  “To this day, there are pictures that perpetuate the suffering that the Jews went through in the Holocaust. But what shocked me more than anything are the pictures of the shoes. Mountains of shoes! And the horrific thought that goes through your head is that behind every pair of shoes is a person who’s no longer here,” Ahron added with wet eyes.

  “Monstrous,” Jeff whispered in shock and continued staring at the picture, as though hit by lightning, paying mind to the clumsy, shabby shoes on Hanna’s feet. He tried looking at the other pictures in the album, but the picture of those three girls kept flashing before his eyes. However, it was Hanna’s frightened eyes that wouldn’t give him peace.

  When he returned home, he couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking of the gas chambers in which millions of people found their deaths. He fell asleep just before dawn, but his sleep was a restless one.

  In his dream, he stood in the middle of a sunny green field, full of flowers of all color. While strolling pleasurably, he noticed a distant grove, full of trees with bright green branches. As he admired the magical scene, he suddenly felt cold. So cold that even his winter attire couldn’t warm him up. He carried his eyes to the sky and saw black clouds covering the sky. When he looked down, the flowers disappeared, and prickly bushes took their place. The trees shed their leaves, which dried up and turned black. The colorful scene faded, and the green field became dark and gloomy. And then he noticed them, a pair of threadbare shoes, hidden in one of the bushes. When he came closer, the shoes started to multiply, until they piled into a mound. He tried to retreat, but the mound grew larger until it became a huge mountain of shoes. Terrified, Jeff looked around, but the only thing he saw was an endless chain of mountains. All of them shoes. Baby shoes, children’s shoes, men’s shoes, and women’s shoes. Then he noticed the shoes moving. First, they moved quietly and slowly, and then in an ear-splitting racket. Jeff started running for his life, and the shoes chased him. As he ran on, the shoes grew fewer and fewer, until only one shoe remained, a stubborn shoe that continued jumping along, the sound of its terrifying steps growing louder and louder. In a minute, it would hit his back and overcome him. From afar, he noticed a ramshackle shed that looked empty. He ran toward it, and when he arrived, he locked himself in one of the rooms. The pursuing shoe continued to knock on the door for a long time. In the end, it gave up and left. A distressing silence fell on the room. Jeff examined his surroundings. The room was small and narrow and empty. In the beginning, he was there alone, but gradually, many people started streaming in: women, men, old people, babies. Barefoot, naked, they entered the room, and it grew more and more crowded. Everyone pushed everyone. A silent mass that swayed from side to side, like a pendulum. Even if they breathed their last, they would remain standing. It was so crowded that no one would fall. Jews. The number burned on their arms exposed their identity. Jeff studied his arms. Thank God! He didn’t have a number like the rest of these people. Then what was a Christian like himself doing among this herd of persecuted Jews? There must be a mistake that would be immediately corrected. He’d report this, and everything would be fine. Suddenly, he noticed Hanna, the girl from the picture. She stood in a corner of the room, her hands crossed behind her back. Unlike all the other people in the room, she wore the same clothes she wore in the picture. He tried to call her, but couldn’t make a sound. Then, he raised his hand and waved at her, but she didn’t notice him. Like all the others, her eyes were focused on the ceiling. Right over his head, a thin iron pipe protruded, and started permeating the damn gas into the room. Like the devil, you couldn’t see it or smell it, but you could easily hear the rustle of poisonous air slowly creeping out of the pipe and spreading, with infuriating, cruel slowness, into the small, crowded room. Suddenly, the suffocating stench of urine and feces overwhelmed him. Fear had paralyzed the people in the room so strongly that they couldn’t control their bowels.

  “It’s a mistake! A mistake! I’ve been brought here by mistake. I’m not
a Jew!” he screamed. However, no one paid attention to his screams, and the gas just continued spreading from the ceiling, slowly, stubbornly. Jeff started to feel his throat close. His breaths became short and quick. Next to him, a lifeless woman stood, her weakened hands still clutching her dead baby, pressing it to her chest. And there was a little girl, too. She stood petrified, only the tears streaming from her blue eyes to her pale lips indicating she was human. Behind her, an old man froze in place while clutching his throat, in a desperate attempt to bring even a bit of oxygen to his lungs, his wide eyes refusing to believe. Jeff also opened his mouth, but there was no air. From the corner of his eye, he managed to see Hanna’s head droop, her eyes rolling back in her head. And just one moment before he suffocated like everyone else, he made one last attempt to breathe. Jeff mustered what was left of his strength, took a deep breath, but instead, what came out of his mouth was a terrible scream that shook him and jerked him awake. His body was wet, as well as his pillow and sheet.

  He hastily jumped out of his bed, as if it were a suffocation demon threatening to cut his life short, and ran to the kitchen. With trembling hands, he poured himself a glass of cold water. His head hurt and his legs were shaky. What was the meaning of that terrifying dream? Never before had he dreamed such a terrifying and tangible dream. He returned to bed and slept until noon.

  The phone ringing woke him. At first, he considered not answering, but it just continued ringing. In the end, he gave in, got up, and answered. On the other side of the line was his mother.

  “Dad died last night,” she wept quietly.

  Jeff wasn’t surprised. Since that conversation with Pam, he expected a call notifying him of his father’s death. Jeff accepted the news with mixed feelings. On the one hand, his death put an end to the ordeal that his father put his family through. On the other hand, he felt sorry for his mother, who was clearly sad, despite his father’s abuse.

  “When’s the funeral?” he asked, even though he knew he wouldn’t attend.