by Emuna Elon
Young men she had known in her youth became her friends but did not fall in love with her, perhaps because they were deterred by her strength and sharp tongue, and even by that tall body of hers with its large, long limbs that seemed to be never-ending. But on one lunch break she went into the staff dining room and sat down, quite by chance, opposite the new internal medicine doctor who had just come to the Jewish hospital with his awkward way of moving and eyeglasses with lenses thicker than she’d ever seen. He was a head and a half shorter than her and spoke in the high chord that usually turned her off, but he was enthusiastically explaining to another doctor the importance of the cosmopolitan trend emerging in the world after the World War (the First World War, which they didn’t yet know would be followed by another one) and the special role to be played by Holland, which, not by chance, had been passed over by that foolish conflict, in striving toward the unification of all nations and the abrogation of all the unnecessary borders—geographical, mental, and metaphorical—dividing them pointlessly. That was the first time she’d heard her own opinions voiced so cleverly and precisely by someone else, and with no less passion than her own, and she listened avidly to the words of the new doctor, who before long began listening to hers.
A great belief in humankind in general and the Dutch people in particular was what brought them together during lunch breaks in the following days too, and through that winter they continued discussing the subject in the confines of the hospital and outside it as well, in cafés, in the park, in bed. When they decided to get married they believed that they had been granted the privilege of raising a cosmopolitan family in a world that would henceforth only become unified, a world that would break down the barriers of nationalism, separatism, and hatred, a world that would gradually be reformed.
As he comes out of the elevator into the corridor, Yoel meets Josephine coming out of his room after changing his sheets and towels. How good it is to meet someone who notices me, he thinks, how good to see a face lighting up on seeing me and lips smiling at me above a silver stud shining in the depression of a chin.
From their casual conversations in the breakfast room, where sometimes he is the only guest, he has learned that Josephine’s family immigrated to Holland when she was a child, and that today she is alone after raising her two children on her own. At that moment he feels like asking her how one actually washes dreadlocks as long as hers, and how often, but instead he asks how she is, and after she replies that she’s fine, he asks if she sometimes misses her beautiful islands. Josephine’s thick black arms hug the bundle of towels and sheets she has taken from his room as she laughs. Miss them? No, never. But, she says gravely, her father, who all his life was a strong, sturdy man, was injured in a work accident last year and since then he’s not quite right in the head. Most of the time he thinks he’s in their old village in Curaçao, and lately he’s started talking only in his childhood language, Papiamento.
Waiting for him on the Formica-topped table in his room, in a green bottle that once contained beer and is now filled with water, is the beautiful Van Gogh sunflower that also recognizes him, and it seems that its yellow face lights up when it sees him too. He confirms that Josephine has not moved his bag and exposed the stain of candle wax underneath it. On Saturday evening, after finally being able to count three stars in the sky, between the bed and the balcony door he had recited the evening prayer and the havdalah ritual separating the Sabbath day from weekdays, and when he crossed the two candles as he recited the blessing for the fire’s light, he was concentrating so hard on not activating the smoke detector in the ceiling that he didn’t notice the clear wax dripping from his flame onto the wall-to-wall carpeting, and afterward he was unable to get rid of the stubborn stain, not by scraping it with a knife and not by rubbing it with the liquid stain remover he bought in a supermarket the following day. So now he hides this mark of disgrace underneath his bag, suspecting it is liable to be discovered sooner or later.
* * *
Eddy’s thoughts are with his patients waiting for him at the hospital and Sonia has to keep tugging his arm, to turn his head to the paintings on the walls of the museum and remind him that he’s supposed to look as if he finds them interesting.
Now Yoel observes them from a distance after yesterday, while he was saying his morning prayer as usual in his hotel room, he discovered that from his balcony he can see the spires of the Rijksmuseum if there aren’t too many clouds. Between the left-hand row of houses and the foliage of a nearby tree that almost hides them, the four pointed spires mark the horizon and he knows that somewhere beneath them Sonia and Eddy are walking around, hiding from their pursuers, and hoping for the best.
* * *
At that moment inside the museum Sonia feels that someone is following them, and when she turns to look she sees the inquiring eyes of a woman about her age wearing a fine fur coat. Sonia takes care not to display signs of fear or tension, and with all possible nonchalance she tugs Eddy in the opposite direction and they calmly walk into the next gallery, but a few minutes later the fur-coated woman and her suspicious look also come in, and Sonia stops at Van Veggel’s Madonna and Child, pretending to inspect it slowly while deep inside she remembers how much she loved this statuette when she was younger and how she always noticed the hidden gold joining its two figures and always decided that this was the kind of mother she wanted to be when she grew up. Then she glances at the clock on the wall, makes a show of being surprised at the time, and says aloud: Look how late it is, we’ve got to run! And she pulls Eddy through the room where many more Virgin Marys are cradling their infants that they never had to leave in other people’s hands, definitely not in hands like Anouk’s and definitely not when the children were burning up with fever; she drags Eddy under the stone arches outside the museum, and from there not toward their street, where the police raid is apparently still at its height, but toward the Spiegelgracht, which is in the opposite direction. Don’t look back, she warns Eddy, who is walking beside her. She tightens her arm around his and they cross the Prinsengracht, walk up the street with the art shops, cross the Keizersgracht, and walk away from where their home is, away from the coughing Leo and from Nettie, who is probably frightened lest she never see her mama again; lest she and her little brother have to stay forever with Sebastian’s mother, who is trying to pacify the sick Leo, whose crying intensifies and Sebastian’s mother is already crying with him.
* * *
Yoel is looking at the pointed spires of the Rijksmuseum marking the horizon in the narrow space between the trees opposite his room and the end of the left-hand row of houses. He looks at the spires and thinks about the museum he can see from the window of his home in Jerusalem: there facing him are the whitish cubes of the Israel Museum and the tapered white dome of the Shrine of the Book, at the right-hand edge of the bright panoramic view that spreads the width of the wide window of his study to the neighborhoods beyond the southern shore of the Valley of the Cross. There the horizon is marked by the western chain of hills of the Israeli capital, where on a clear day you can see the Beit HaKerem and Bayit VeGan neighborhoods, the mass of the Holyland Tower, and the forested hill whose summit, just before the big new Gilo neighborhood, is cut by the new separation wall. Here, facing the hotel balcony is spread the childhood landscape of Anouk Rosso, née de Lange, whereas the area spread before his Jerusalem window is the childhood landscape of Bat-Ami Blum, née Avni. How Bat-Ami loves telling him about her childhood in the wild, tangled thickets that in those days filled the Valley of the Cross, how she played there with her friends and how they gathered twigs for their bonfires and then sang sad Russian tunes around the tongues of flame and the baking potatoes, and how she and two other neighborhood children had laid claim to one of the many caves in the rocky ground and opened a “candle factory” in it where they melted candles they filched from their homes and tried to make new candles from the melted wax. We hoped to get rich from it. Bat-Ami chuckles. No wonder it was my first and
last business venture.
* * *
Sonia’s heart goes out to her children but she has no choice but to move farther away from them. They walk west toward Keizersgracht and Eddy suddenly freezes.
Don’t stop, she urges him without moving her lips, I think we’re still being followed.
But when she looks in the direction he’s looking at she sees the crane of the truck parked between the buildings and the canal bank. She sees the arm of the crane raise a huge iron hook to an open window on the third floor of a fine house and the barge anchored in the canal and porters arranging on its deck velvet couches, carved wooden wardrobes, and other items of fine furniture that the crane continues taking, one at a time, from the open window. That’s Sherman’s house, Eddy whispers, and Sonia remembers that the director of the Jewish hospital indeed lives here, and at first she wonders why the respected director has chosen to move at a time like this, but then she notices how pale Eddy’s face is and hears him murmur, They arrested him only last week, and she is alarmed, refusing to believe it: Arrested him? They arrested Professor Sherman? It was inconceivable that they would arrest such an eminent personality, an affluent physician who is respected in Dutch society and who lives, that is, lived until a week ago, here on Keizersgracht in that impressive house on the banks of the beautiful canal in the center of the city.
And the two of them stand and watch as the porters inside the house reach out of the third-floor window and catch the hook that had again been raised by the crane’s arm and was attached to a heavy cable. A short time later the end of the cable emerges from the open window and on the hook are several large gilt-framed paintings bound together with a rope. The paintings are tied with their backs facing outward so it is impossible to see which paintings they are. The crane arm is slowly lowered, the bundle of paintings is landed on the barge deck, and the porters waiting there extend their arms to receive it.
Thieves, Eddy hisses. Disgusting thieves.
Sonia strokes his arm wordlessly. In a moment she will try to pull him away from there, and not only because she fears they are being followed. She will try to pull him away because she doesn’t want to stay here until the workers finish emptying the house of all the valuables that the old professor and his wife have collected over all the years of their life. She doesn’t have the strength to see him watch the barge sail away, loaded with all the Shermans’ furniture and carpets and lamps, their dishes and art treasures, and their days and years and loves and hopes, and sail down the Keizersgracht on its way to the Amstel, then the IJ, from there to the Rhine and thence into the heart of Germany.
* * *
And Yoel leaves the room and walks, he walks amid all the unbearable beauty of this city until he stops on one of the bridges over the Keizersgracht, leans on the stylized rail between parked bicycles, and thinks, If I had been an ordinary Dutchman among ordinary Dutchmen, if I had remained in the city where I was born and lived in it without fear, then perhaps I would have chosen—why not?—to live in one of these small houseboats moored along the banks of the canal. Perhaps I’d have bought myself an old fishing boat that was tired of sailing and adventures, and perhaps I would have remodeled that boat into a lovely little home: a home that sails above great depths while I lie on its bottom and feel the movement of the water beneath me, sit between its bulwarks and listen to the tumult of the abyss, stand on its deck and let my heart encounter the heart of the sea.
38
Leo rolls the red ball, chases it in a crawl, picks it up with both hands, and rolls it again.
Leo holds out a blue wooden building block. He smiles happily when it’s taken from him. Then he opens his hand to ask for the block back, and then he holds it out again, and so on and so forth.
Leo mumbles his first words: Dada, Mama, [Net]Tie, [Than]Kyou.
Leo sits on the floor, his legs stretched forward and his feet crossed.
He looks at the colored wooden blocks scattered around him.
Puts a red block on top of a yellow one.
Claps his hands.
* * *
Late in the evening Yoel passes the Concertgebouw, hears the sounds of Beethoven’s magnificent Ninth Symphony, and knows that inside the hall at this moment, during the war, that is, the last concert with the participation of Jewish musicians is taking place. He ascends the wide stone steps and waits by the closed doors until the final chord and the outburst of rapturous applause from the audience. The applause goes on for a long time as one at a time the Jewish musicians walk to the forestage and take a final bow. Then he hears the encore, excerpts from Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos performed with a wonderful delicacy that does not leave a dry eye in the auditorium, followed by another prolonged wave of applause accompanied by calls for another encore, which mandates a consultation between the musicians, and then another short piece and more applause. As the Jewish musicians take their absolutely final bow the audience gets to their feet and waves farewell to them with their handkerchiefs. In accordance with the occupation authorities’ decree, Jews will no longer be allowed to attend the Concertgebouw, neither to play music nor listen to it. Even the names of Jewish composers whose works are performed here will be erased.
* * *
Bat-Ami sometimes calls him Eesh sheli, in Hebrew—my man—and sometimes she joins the two words and says Eesheli, but most of all she likes to re-separate the words differently and call him Ee sheli: my island. For even if he is indeed an island, he is hers. Even from across the sea she reads him as if she has opened his soul with one of her numerous keys.
He is standing on his balcony and her voice is speaking to him from the cell phone that is already burning his ear. He had returned from his wanderings a short while ago, entered the hotel through the night entrance at the rear, and climbed four flights of steep stairs. Now the backyards of the two rows of houses are dozing down below, immersed in darkness, and in most of the windows facing onto the yards the lights are off. Deep in sleep is the third basement apartment on the right, the apartment he calls “Sonia’s apartment,” and in its windows is only the reflection of the shrubs against the backdrop of a swing hanging from a tree branch. In the psychoanalyst’s unlit room the flickering of her screen saver illuminates the piles of papers on her desk. The dancer’s windows are in complete darkness now, after he had earlier moved between the rooms of his existence in his lithe movements as he washed and scrubbed and polished all the dishes and surfaces in his white kitchen. Only from the upper left-hand window the glass eyes of the stuffed animal still peer, and from between the tall trees at the end of the right-hand row of buildings the gilded harp atop the Concertgebouw gleams, one moment hidden by the dark branches swaying in the night breeze and a moment later revealed in all its glory, then hidden again, and then revealed, and again and again.
As had been happening toward the end of each phone conversation since his arrival here, tonight too Bat-Ami suggests that she drop everything and come to Amsterdam to be with him. In all their calls so far he has refused her offer but the truth is that on this occasion it’s hard for him: he so much would love Bat-Ami to come and look after him, look after him and protect him. He so much wants her to be with him, to be with him and alleviate the burden of his loneliness: the loneliness that has enshrouded him throughout his life like another layer of skin, and here in Amsterdam has become thicker and rougher, its weight restricting his movements.
What can he do when just as he replies to Bat-Ami’s suggestion—You know what? Come then, but when can you get here?—the church bell starts announcing the arrival of midnight. The twelve peals of Our Lady sound from the end of the world all the way to its other end, and Bat-Ami shouts: What? What, hold on, I can’t hear you! And at the finale of the chain of ding-dongs, which seems to be never-ending, Yoel says in his usual moderate tone, It’s alright, Bat-Ami, everything’s fine, there’s no need for you to come to Amsterdam. I mean, thanks for the offer, but I think it’s best that I continue along this road by myself, and Ba
t-Ami pauses a moment and says: Yes, my dear, yes, I understand. And after they wish one another goodnight and end the call, he switches the phone off and goes back into the room from the balcony, not before taking a last look at the stuffed animal that is still checking him out from the darkness of the left-hand window, still crouched on the sideboard and fixing him with its gleaming glass eyes as if trying to decipher him once and for all.
* * *
Jews Are Forbidden: To fish, travel on public transportation, drive a car, enter public places, join a club, go to school, enter a hotel, go to the theater, swim in a pool, appear without a yellow star on their clothing, buy vegetables at a non-Jewish shop, ride a bicycle, go shopping between three and five in the afternoon, go to a hairdresser, use a telephone, visit non-Jews, study at a university, leave their homes after eight in the evening, approach the municipal or state authorities unless it is through the Jewish Council.
We do not consider the Jews to be part of the Dutch nation. The Jews are the enemy with whom no armistice or peace can be made, says the Reichskommissar in the Netherlands in a speech. We shall smite the Jews where we meet them and whoever goes along with them must take the consequences.
* * *
And Martin. Martin continues his nightly scanning of distant radio stations.
* * *
Yoel knows only what he picks up through his five senses, but deep inside he is forced to admit that Bat-Ami picks up more than that. A few years ago, she decided to leave teaching and become proficient in some sort of parapsychological, physiological, spiritual therapy, and at first he feared she would get bored and change her mind, but since then, from day to day and by word of mouth, the list of women seeking this odd New Age therapy had grown, a therapy she’s good at and about which he understands nothing. Her clients admiringly contend that she possesses the powers of a witch. And after one of them presented her, full of thanks, with a picture of a witch, additional clients and friends began plying her with drawings of witches, statuettes of witches, books about witches, and all sorts of items embossed with images of witches. Bat-Ami smiles when she sees how alarmed he is with all this witchery. They’re just images of old women, she says, trying to calm him, at a certain age every woman gets a wrinkled face and a nice hump, a hooked nose and a hoarse voice, and every woman carries a broom. It’s only you men who are capable of attributing negative magical powers to these sweet old ladies!