by Norman Manea
“Eating what?”
“Well, whatever there was, nothing, something out of nothing.”
“And Grandfather? Did you know him? My great-grandfather.”
“No, he was before my time. Manoliu, the veterinarian, and Du-mitrescu, the notary, used to tell me: Sheina — that’s what they called me — it’s a shame you didn’t know your grandfather … his snow-white stockings, his immaculateness, his air of holiness. He was a religious man, very learned, very stern, that’s what they all said.”
“Sheina, does that come from schòn, sbein in Yiddish, beautiful?”
“Well, that’s what they said …”
She continues to speak, but her voice never recovers its former vitality. The questions I ask do not have the hoped-for effect. The story is not new, and we who have heard it so many times before are no longer young. The ritual retelling is in honor of the guest from afar, to remind her of what she has left behind.
“What about Great-grandmother, the widow with all the children. How did she manage?”
“She had a small pension from the community. The children all worked, from a very young age, especially the boys. This was a family trait. Aunt Leah used to say, and so did her children: One must work, one must work hard, work hard.’ Her sons started to work when they were ten. They were poor, they had no clothes. And those cold winters … they gave private lessons to children from rich families, the Nussgartens and the Hoffmans from Fălticeni. At five in the afternoon, these people stopped for tea and cakes, but they never offered any to the poor tutors.”
“And these were your fellow Jews, all pious people? It wasn’t your Uncle Marx who invented the class struggle… Now tell us about Grandfather, your father.”
“There were no newspapers in Burdujeni in those days. You could only buy them in the big city, Suceava, a few kilometers away. Burdujeni was really just a small town then, but it was very lively, buzzing with life. All our family comes from there, from Burdujeni, my grandfather, my father, all of us. My father was the first in Burdujeni to order a newspaper by mail, Dimineafa (The Morning)—one copy, just for him.”
“But you said he never went to school.”
“No, what I meant was that he didn’t go to the Romanian-language school. How could he, on a Saturday? He was self-taught, that’s what he was. All the same, many people came to him for advice, like they would to a lawyer. He was the first in Burdujeni to order Dirnineafa. The neighbors all came to read the paper every day. After a while, he ordered five copies. That’s how he got started in his business. That’s how the trouble started, too. When Wechsler — that was his name — saw that my father had ordered Dimineafa, he ordered Minerva. But Wechsler had money, and for five bani he’d give you a copy of Minerva, and throw in a pint of beer and a cigarette as well. That’s competition for you, enough to ruin us.”
“When did all this happen? How old was Grandfather?”
“About seventeen at the time, when he started his first newspaper business, in Burdujeni. Eventually, he became the second biggest distributor of newspapers in the country. He was decorated by Stelian Popescu, the director of Universul.”
“Universul? Wasn’t that a right-wing paper?”
“Of course, and anti-Semitic, too. Still, they decorated him, a Jew. Constantin Mille gave him an award as well. I’ve told you all this before. Mille was the director of Adevãrul (The Truth), the democratic paper, and he was very fond of my father. When my sister Rebecca got married, Father sent him an invitation, and Constantin Mille sent a gift in return, an embroidered velour bedspread, and a nice telegram.”
“What about Graur, Rebecca’s husband? What did he do for a living?”
“Grain.”
“So, one was in grain, the other in newspapers, and another in eggs. The International Conspiracy, with its headquarters in Burdujeni! Wasn’t it Noah, Grandfather’s brother, who used to sell eggs?”
“That’s right. Noah — you have his name — he used to sell eggs when he lived in Botos, ani. As you know, Jews were allowed into the country by the Romanian princes, just for this and nothing else — all we were permitted to do was engage in trade. So Noah exported Romanian eggs throughout Europe. He owes his death to all that dust, the dust from the packaging. All his life he had to inhale the dust from the hay. He got cancer of the throat and died at fifty. Auntie Bella, his widow, continued the business. She handled the correspondence in three languages, a first-class tradeswoman.”
“Better than yourself?”
“Maybe. Yes, even better. I used to be told that I could have been a very good lawyer. That’s what they said about Father, too. They all used to come to him for advice.”
“You would have made a good lawyer, I’m sure. Maybe that would have calmed you down. The lawsuits would have exhausted you and helped you to relax. You told me a few years ago how much you regretted not smoking or drinking, not having any of the vices that might calm you down. That’s what you told me, remember?”
“I haven’t had a quiet life, that’s true. I started working as a child. Father, God bless him, traveled a lot on business. I was left with all the chores. Sometimes he went beyond Suceava, into neighboring counties, to Botosani, Dorohoi. He did business with schools, 10 percent commission on the sale of textbooks. In return, the schools made sure that all their textbooks and stationery carried our stamp.”
“Librăria Noastră, Our Bookstore, wasn’t that its name? Quite a socialist name, no? So, it was you people who introduced socialism to the country. The anti-Semites must be right about the Jews. Don’t you remember, by the ‘50s and ‘60s all the bookstores were called Librăria Noastră? In the 1950s you used to work at a Librăria Noastră, in Suceava; all bookstores were state-owned and called Librăria Noastră. Before the war, you were all accused of being capitalist exploiters, sucking the people’s blood. Then you were accused of bringing in Communism, the gravedig-ger of capitalism.”
She is looking at us without seeing. The jokes don’t seem to animate her, politics never interested her, she just wants to be allowed to re-enter the legends of the past.
“We worked hard, we lived hard. Yes, Librăria Noastră, Our Bookstore, that was the name, and it was ours, not the state’s. A big difference.”
“Well, yes, an essential difference.”
“The schools bought only books and stationery with our stamp on them, that was the understanding. When the schools opened in September, there were endless lines, like those at the bakeries. In the evening I dropped with exhaustion. I worked hard from an early age. We all worked hard, Father and I and Şulim, my brother. After I got married, I still continued to help my parents. When they sent us to the labor camp, my parents took with them only 5,000 lei, that’s all they had, but the stock left behind in the bookstore was worth a million lei.”
“You carried everything, you said.”
“Of course. Books by Sadoveanu, Rebreanu, Eminescu, everybody, Fundoianu, Sebastian. And newspapers, too, all the papers. Father even went to press congresses.”
“And he used to carry the papers from the station himself? That’s what you would tell us, all by himself, at dawn, on that poplar-lined road. I know it, I walked there recently.”
There I was, manipulating nostalgia, the tricks of the past, from which my old mother could now retrieve only the odd verbal residue. Even this was going to vanish soon, I knew. Everything was going to disappear, the old tales, and this, the present moment of retelling, would soon become past. She was sliding, with her unseeing eyes, down the last bend of that toboggan run called biography. Ruti was about to return to Jerusalem, and as for me, no one knew where I would be by the autumn. All three of us were trying to ease the tension of that reunion, to sort out old conflicts. The year 1986 was a Hooligan Year, just like the ones before and after, socialist years, turned into National Socialist years. Was this the reason why I now paid attention to these tales to which I usually turned a deaf ear? Before, I was impatient with these tearful stories, just
as I could not stand that exasperating refrain, departure, departure, departure. Was I finally acknowledging that she was right, or was I just trying to soften the blow of our imminent separation?
Mother didn’t hear my last words. Recently, she had begun to fade out.
“He used to carry the newspapers back from the station himself,” I repeated.
“The horse-drawn coach was only one leu. ‘Only one leu, Father, why don’t you take the coach?’ ‘I need the exercise,’ he said. He walked thirteen kilometers every day. In the morning, before he set off for the station, he would have grilled beefsteak with a glass of wine. If it weren’t for the deportation, he would have lived to a ripe old age; he was healthy, fit. My mornings started at seven, with black coffee, and nothing else until five or six in the afternoon.”
“Did he pay you?”
“Pay me, his own daughter? I was his favorite daughter. I had everything I needed, he wouldn’t have refused me anything. I worked hard, of course. I was always a fast worker.”
“And the baby, your son? Were you fast with that, too?”
“You arrived before the nine months. I was almost dead when I gave birth. The doctor kept vigil by my bed from Wednesday until the following Sunday morning. He didn’t know how to help, he thought I was lost. As for the baby … no hope. The baby will be stillborn, that’s what they were saying. And then, after you were born, nobody believed you would survive. You were so tiny, under the normal weight. They put you in an incubator. Only my father remained optimistic. He asked whether you had nails. If he has nails, he’ll live, that’s what he said.”
“I sort of lost my nails later in life. He was right, they would’ve come in handy, at any age, a sign of life.”
The three of us laugh, Mother with her short, weak laugh. She has been out of the hospital only a few days, which is why Ruti has come all the way from Jerusalem. Ruti was like a daughter, the orphaned niece, daughter of my father’s brother, who was raised in our home.
I carefully rewind the tape recorder on the coffee table. The blind woman on the couch cannot see the machine, she is not aware that she is being recorded. She is completely blind. The operation has solved nothing.
“What about your husband, the baby’s father. How did he win you?”
“That’s another story, a long story. I used to go to Fălticeni in the summer. It was July 20, St. Elias Day. I went from Burdujeni with my friends, young men and women. On that particular day, I was waiting for the bus home in Fălticeni, the same as I did every year. Suddenly this smartly dressed young man appeared, with a folding stool.”
“A folding stool?”
“The bus was always overcrowded. He placed his small stool next to me. And after a while he asked, Are you related to Mrs. Riemer? Leah Riemer, from Fălticeni. Mrs. Riemer is my aunt, I said. I looked very much like Auntie Leah, that’s what people said.” The old, sagging face, ravaged by time and illness, looks older than that of old Leah Riemer, the way I had seen her for the last time, about twenty years ago, when she came — the clan’s diplomatic envoy — to persuade me to break off my pagan romance with the shiksa, which had scandalized the whole family. Leah Riemer’s calm, biblical face showed no signs of the traumas I now read on the blind mask before me.
“He knew Mrs. Riemer and her husband, Kiva the chess player, chess partner of the writer Mihai Sadoveanu. Kiva was quite difficult to live with, Leah had trouble with him. He was very smart, an upholsterer by trade, but he hung around at the café, gambling his money away. The young man also knew the Riemer children, brilliant, hardworking students. At that time, the Riemers spoke Hebrew at home, the only such household in town. He asked me if I knew Paulina, the lame seamstress married to a cousin of his. Then, after a while, he told me he was courting someone, Miss Landau. I knew her, Bertha, the pharmacist, a nice girl.”
“So, confessions at first sight.”
“Well now, how long is it from Fălticeni to Suceava? Just over an hour. He got off at the junction in Iţcani, he worked at the sugar factory there. I went on to Burdujeni. When I got home, I went over to Amalia, to tell her all about it. Amalia was my neighbor and friend. I told her I’d just met a very nice young man on the bus, a friend of Bertha’s.”
“Nicer fifty years ago than today, wouldn’t you say?”
“The following Saturday, I got a picture postcard from him,” the convalescent continued, as though she hadn’t heard my question. “ ‘To Miss Janeta Braunstein, bookseller de luxe,’ that was all that was written on it. Then, one day, I saw him pass through Burdujeni on his bicycle. He stopped and told me there was a ball in Iţcani the following Saturday and would I like to go with him. He turned up that Saturday at five, when everybody in Burdujeni was out on the porch, in patent-leather shoes and a handsome jacket. A taxi was waiting, but my parents wouldn’t let me go, they didn’t know who he was.”
“You were so submissive? I don’t believe it.”
“After that, Marcu and I went to all the balls. He’d always come by on a Saturday and on Sunday afternoon, as well as on Wednesday evenings, on his bicycle. There were always balls in Iţcani, charity balls, collecting for all sorts of things, a school, a skating rink, the hunters’ club. I wore a different dress to each ball. The purple dress created a sensation: purple satin, with shoes and hat to match.”
“He could afford all those balls, on an accountant’s salary?”
She points to her dry lips with her fingers, she is thirsty. I bring a glass of water and offer it to her, but she cannot see it. I bring her hand to the glass. The hand trembles as it holds the glass. She takes two sips, signals me to take the glass away. I put it on the table in front of her; she does not see it.
“Of course, on his salary, he had a good income at the factory. He would send me flowers, lilacs and roses, and letters. We were young, those were different times.”
“And who made your dresses?”
“Mrs. Waslowitz.”
“The Polish lady. The same Mrs. Waslowitz I knew ten years ago, twenty years ago? She must be two hundred years old by now.”
“She charged three hundred lei per dress. She’s ninety now, but she still goes to church on Sunday, I’m told, every Sunday, summer and winter, come rain or shine.”
“So, she made your dresses under the King, and under the Green Legionnaires, and under the Red Stalinists? And now under our beloved Green-Red leader. What did she say when you disappeared in 1941? She must have known what was going on. And what did she say when you came back?”
“When we were taken away, the mayor would not allow me to put even my slippers in the knapsack. I left them in the corridor. Maria was clinging to us at the station, she wanted to get on the train with us, wouldn’t let go of us. At the frontier, by the Dniester, at Ataki, they let us out of the train. It was a freight train for transporting cattle, we were one on top of the other, like sardines. At Ataki, the plunder began, screams, beatings, gunshots. When we recovered, we were on the other side of the bridge. My parents had been left behind. I saw a soldier. He could have been one of those who had been pushing us with their guns off the train. I am now old, poor wretched me, but then … then I was brave. I went to the soldier and told him: Mister, my parents were left behind at Ataki, they are old. I’ll give you 1,000 lei, please bring them here.”
Transnistria had not been much of a topic of conversation in our home. The Holocaust had not yet become the popular subject of later years, and suffering was not cured through public confession. Usually, these ghetto lamentations irritated me. But were we now reconciled, with the passing of time? Could the bitter, intractable conflict become the stuff of humor?
“Let’s go,” she would say again and again in 1945 and 1955 and all the years that followed. “And there will come an evening … and I will go,” as the poet predicted. Had she ever read at Our Bookstore in Burdujeni that line by Fundoianu-Fondane? The Romanian poet had gone from Paris, not to Jerusalem, but to Auschwitz. Had I finally accepted the burden of this
line of verse, as well as the obsessive foresight of my mother, now unseeing and unable to go anywhere? I no longer jump when I hear words such as “goy,” “shiksa,” “going away,” I can now tolerate all the ghetto mannerisms I had previously tried to escape. She signals again that her lips are dry and she needs a drink. She takes a sip, hands the glass back to me, and is ready to return to center stage.
“‘I’ll give you 1,000 lei,’ I told him. He could have shot me or searched me and taken all my money away. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll go back for your folks, for 1,000 lei, but I also want a jar of Nivea cream.’”
“Nivea? What did he need Nivea for? And how come you had Nivea cream with you?”
“I did, one of God’s little jokes. I had squeezed two jars of Nivea into the knapsack.”
“So, no slippers, but Nivea you took with you.”
“I gave him the Nivea, and he brought my parents back. We took them with us, and they stayed with us until they died. When my father was dying, Frau Doktor Helmann told me she had a small bottle of medicine that might help, Dejalen drops, for the heart. She asked for 1,000 lei.”
“Trading with death in the labor camp?”
“Yes, everyone did. I gave her 1,000 lei. Dr. Weismann from Dorohoi said it was useless, that it was too late. ‘You’d better buy clothes or food for the children with that money,’ he said. But I had to try everything, anything. My father couldn’t even swallow the drops at that stage.”
“You were a fighter to the bitter end.”
“And how! Marcu lost his spirit right from the first, when they pushed us onto the train, and he was no better when they threw us off the train. We woke up at night to the sound of abuse, bayonets in our ribs. When he saw that his shirt was swarming with lice, he cried out, ‘This is no life.’ He lost hope. He was always a very clean man, so elegant and fussy, he wouldn’t wear the same shirt twice, he even had his socks ironed, imagine that. ‘This is not a life worth living,’ he kept repeating. After the first days in Transnistria, he said this over and over again. ‘It’s no longer worth living, not worth it.’ ‘Yes,’ I kept telling him. ‘It is worth it, it is! If we resist, if we survive, you’ll have your clean shirts again. Let’s go on, just for that.’ And we did. Who could have known whether we’d ever come back?”