by Daša Drndic
Listen, Haya, I know something about this. It’s true, salvation is, in human terms, absolutely unattainable; but everything is possible for God! This is a struggle of faith, which, if we can say so, fights madly for possibility. Possibility is the only force that saves . . . At times the inventiveness of the human imagination may be enough to create possibility, but ultimately this means when one should believe, the only thing that helps is that everything is possible for God.
Leave me, Kierkegaard. I don’t feel like talking. This little gastronomical defeat is an ordinary “decoration”. There is no despair in it. I am too old for new despair.
Despairing is not a trait of the young alone. No-one outgrows the way that one “moves beyond an illusion”. But an illusion cannot be outgrown and no-one is so mad as to believe that. Indeed, we will often run into men and women and the elderly who have more childish illusions than any young man or woman. But we forget that illusion has essentially two forms: the form of hope and the form of recollection. Youth has the illusion of hope, age—the illusion of recollection.
My recollections are not illusions. They are not the past. My memories are my present.
This past-present of yours is perhaps something that remorse, in fact, should be dealing with. But for there to be remorse, one must first reach the ultimate point of despair, and spiritual life must reach its foundations. This is difficult. Young people despair for their future as a present in futuro. You despair because of the past as present in praeterito.
I despair because I remember. Leave me, Kierkegaard. Don’t you see that time has arranged itself in circles? The past is reality. The past is a factual state. The past is a fait accompli. But the future offers branching possibilities. Think a little about temporal logic. I am fine with my despair. As with my solitude.
Yes. Only the breed of incoherent, talkative people, this herd of the inseparables, feels no need for any kind of solitude, because they, like little parakeets, die immediately, as soon as they are for a moment left alone. Preserve your despair.
I know. You keep saying that. “Despair—a sickness from which one languishes but does not die. Sickness unto death.” You talk too much, Kierkegaard. I don’t need language any more. Numbers and a few letters suffice, because everything is in formulas, everything.
May I say something?
Who are you?
Pound, the crazy poet
Speak, Pound, tell Kierkegaard.
And the betrayers of language
. . . . . . . . . n and the press gang
And those who had lied for hire;
the perverts, the perverters of language,
the perverts, who have set money-lust
Before the pleasures of the senses [. . .]
The slough of unamiable liars,
bog of stupidities,
malevolent stupidities, and stupidities,
the soil living pus, full of vermin,
dead maggots begetting live maggots,
slum owners,
usurers squeezing crab-lice, pandars to authority,
pets-de-loup, sitting on piles of stone books,
obscuring the texts with philology,
hiding them under their persons,
the air without refuge of silence,
the drift of lice, teething,
and above it the mouthing of orators,
the arse-belching of preachers.
And Invidia,
the corruptio, fætor, fungus,
liquid animals, melted ossifications,
slow rot, fætid combustion,
chewed cigar-butts, without dignity, without tragedy,
. . . . . m Episcopus, waving a condom full of black-beetles,
monopolists, obstructors of knowledge.
obstructors of distribution.
So it is that in 2006 Haya largely stops speaking; she mainly listens to ghosts. And waits.
I stand at the door to the “baths”; under a tree I see a small orchestra: three Jews, yellow stars on their chests, are singing, and three are playing instruments. They have a violin, a mandolin and a flute. The S.S. men like music. They love it when there is playing and singing. They dance at night in their club. The club at Treblinka is called “Casino”. A little orchestra plays the latest hits. Artur Gold performs his popular tango “Autumn Roses”. In the rhythm of autumn roses people go off to the “showers”. They march to the sounds of the violin. The S.S. men smile wistfully.
It is 1942. The anniversary of the outbreak of war is being celebrated at the camp. All night between 31 August and 1 September Jews sing and dance for the Germans. The next day these Jews are no more. They die with a song on their lips. I am Abraham Krzepicki. I escape Treblinka in late 1942. Later I am killed in Warsaw, in 1943. I am twenty-five years old.
There are many musical instruments at the camp, but not enough musicians. Musicians disappear into the “showers”. S.S.-Hauptsturmführer Stangl loves jazz, so he decides to form an orchestra. When he returns from his vacation, he brings back a collection of cymbals. Kurt Franz orders the tailors to make white suits for the members of the orchestra with shiny, blue lapels and collars and giant, monstruous, blue bow ties of the same fabric. Gold trots out on to the stage in a white tuxedo jacket. He is wearing a white shirt, perfectly pressed trousers, patent-leather shoes. His blue lapels and blue collar glitter in the spotlights. As if we are in a Warsaw cabaret. The S.S. men love Gold. And the camp inmates love Gold. For his forty-fifth birthday they throw him a little party in their workshop. That same evening Gold plays for the S.S. personnel in their casino. Then Kurt Franz orders: Compose me an anthem for the camp. Gold writes the melody; the Czech, Walter Hirsz, writes the words. Afterwards both are killed. The anthem is called “Fester Schritt”. The anthem is played during evening roll-call, while S.S. men whip disobedient inmates, and it is played most often when the inmates do exercises in the yard. At the end of roll-call the inmates sing their hymn once more and Kurt Franz shouts, Lauter, lauter! Kurt Franz loves music at Treblinka. Life was lively at Treblinka.
By the way, my name is Oscar Strawczynski. I arrive at Treblinka on 5 October, 1942. I am a smith and there was work at Treblinka for smiths. When I wasn’t working as a smith, I sorted stolen clothing. I took part in the revolt. I saved my brother and sister. Everyone else from my family was killed, my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncles. Everyone. Some at Treblinka, some at Auschwitz. After escaping from Treblinka I joined the partisans. I testified in Düsseldorf in 1965. I died in Montereale in 1966.
I killed myself.
My name is Richard Glazar. I killed myself in Prague in 1997.
I survived the camps. The Americans liberated me. I testified at the trials of Kurt Franz, Stangl, and his companions. I studied in Prague, Paris and London. After the Prague Spring I left Czechoslovakia and lived for a long time in Bern.
In the spring and summer of 1943 there were fewer transports. One evening at roll-call, Kurt Franz said, Sundays in the afternoon we won’t work. We’ll have some fun. We’ll have a cabaret. We’ll play music. We’ll sing. We’ll perform sketches, and sometimes we’ll box, that is what he said. Kurt Franz loved boxing.
Let’s box a few rounds, Kurt Franz said to an inmate. We called Kurt Franz “Lalka”. In Polish lalka means doll. This inmate was a professional boxer from Cracow. He was about twenty years old. The soldiers tied the gloves on to the inmate. Lalka took only one glove, the right one. In that glove he tucked a small pistol and grinned. Go! Now! shouted the S.S. men from behind Lalka’s back. With one hand raised, with the hand in the glove, Lalka stepped up to the inmate as if he were ready for a fight, and then he shot the man between the eyes. The boxer fell dead on the spot. That is how Franz boxed. My name is Jacob Eisner.
This is Strawczynski. I’d like to add something. Do you remember Wolowanczyk? He was the terror of the Warsaw underground. Tall, blonde and robust, stronger than Franz. A dangerous man. He wasn’t more than twenty. He was killed afterw
ards during the revolt. Once Franz—Lalka—started boxing with him, but Wolowanczyk, quick on his feet and spry, kept evading him. Lalka got dangerously angry. He grabbed Wolowanczyk by the shirt and tried to punch him in the head, but the boy flung himself on the ground and Franz missed, lost his balance and fell right next to Wolowanczyk. Then he really went wild. He flung bricks and stones at the boy, threw him to the ground again, kicked him hysterically and flogged him. I watched it all from the roof of the barrack and I was sure Wolowanczyk was dead, that Franz had killed him. But no. Wolowanczyk got up, brushed off the dust and walked away as if nothing had happened. Go on, Glazar.
Concerts were rehearsed in the hallways in front of the gas chambers. One sunny afternoon we gathered around the ring. The S.S. men, trim in their uniforms, sit in a semi-circle. We stand behind them, our heads shaved, in rags; the guards, the body carriers, the tailors, the cobblers, the upholsterers, the cooks, all stand, the washers, clerks, accountants, doctors, gravediggers. We inmates stand behind the S.S. men, and our backs are guarded by soldiers with guns at the ready. Artur Gold and his boys, all in white jackets with broad blue lapels, play a march, after which “the show may begin”. Stangl, head of the camp, sits in the middle. He keeps the beat with his foot and light flicks of the whip to his polished boot. Salwe comes onstage and plays an Italian tarantella. After him, one of the best Warsaw tenors performs an aria from Tosca, the music ascends heavenward, above the barracks, above the gas chambers, disappearing into the pine trees. Then Salwe sings. Salwe sings an aria from Halevy’s opera La Juive. He sings “Rachel, quand du Seigneur”, and we look on, frozen. The S.S. men do not react. Only Stangl turns.
Artur Gold and his brother Henryk were Polish musical stars, especially Henryk. He survived. They performed with their eight-piece jazz orchestra at the Café Bodega in Warsaw. At first they played ragtime, then later waltzes and tangos. They cut records for Syrena, Electro and Columbia. Jerzy Petersburski played with them, author of the hits “O, Donna Clara”, “The Last Sunday”. There were quite a few musicians at Treblinka. The Schermann brothers were there, and little Edek who played the accordion . . .
One day in October 1942, while I was taking bodies out of the newly constructed gas chambers, a kapo came up to me with a violin in his hand and asked, Do you know anyone who can play? I know, I said, I play.
They immediately moved me into the kitchen to peel potatoes. There were six of us. One was Fuchs, who played the clarinet and who had worked for the Polish Radio before Treblinka. At first just the two of us played, Fuchs and I, from time to time during roll-calls. Then we were joined by a pianist and composer from Warsaw who played the accordion, and from that time we were a trio. The most popular song was the love song “Tumbalalaika”. That spring an S.S. man often came by whose nickname was “Blackie” (der Schwartze). He would sit himself down on a chair near the well and order us to play for him. He’d say, Play one for my soul. At Treblinka once we played at a Jewish wedding. That day there was a lot of dancing. Then the happy couple was led to the “showers”.
My name is Jerzy Rajgrodzki.
Lager zwei ist unser Leben, ay, ay, ay! Lager zwei ist unser Leben, ay, ay, ay! we sang in chorus, on the open area between the gas chambers and the mass graves. I am a singer and actor from Prague. My name is Spiegel. I died, too.
Pause.
It will be summer soon. Haya goes out for walks again.
The shop windows are full of women’s suits in pastel hues. Haya looks at them. The skirts are too short, she says. Women have fat knees. The suits close the construction and express a function as a power series of the argument x with the assumption that the function is infinitely differentiable at 0. That would be a Maclaurin series. In a Taylor Series, the function y = f(x) is expressed as a power series in a neighbourhood of point a, Haya says to a woman who is also standing in front of the display window.
I don’t understand, the woman says.
I’m not surprised, says Haya and walks on. Haya walks slowly. Her step is not unsteady. Haya is a hale old woman.
Haya walks and hums. The noise levels are mounting in Gorizia. Gorizia is loud, Haya says. Whenever she goes out, Haya senses more noise. The noise sits on her brow and weighs down on her head. Gorizia is full of exhaust fumes today. There are new cafés. Haya goes to the park. The greenery at the park is intense; it soothes her eyes. Haya sings to outnoise the noise rolling down the Corso. If she could, if she were younger, she’d chase the noise; she’d say to it Shoo! or maybe she’d say to it Come, lie on my bosom, because there is too much quiet in her breast. She is not younger. What can she do about that? Haya hums. How is it that Haya hums when she isn’t particularly happy? Generally when they sing people feel glad. They probably first feel glad, then they think, Ah, I’m filled with gladness, and then they sing. Is that it? But what if the songs people sing when they are glad, what if these songs are sad? It must be that they are moved then by a sorrow that mingles with their happiness. As with mathematics. Formulae. Planes interweave. Planes of sorrow and happiness melt to zero, to nothing. What is going on? Haya says, surprised. Nothing is coming out of my breast, she says. A big immobility is crouching inside. By the time she died Ada could no longer sing; something had happened to her voice box. When she tried to sing, though seldom, as she neared death, she could only squawk. She’d look at Haya and say, Something’s broken. She died wearing a yellow, short-sleeved blouse with Richelieu embroidery and red wine stains that had gone dark blue. A beautiful blouse. This is the blouse my mother wore when she brought the soldiers their macaroons, Ada told Haya, then she died. In that hospital. In Dr Basaglia’s ward. Haya did not bury Ada at Valdirosa. When Ada died the Valley of the Roses was in another country. Haya put Ada in a little niche, here, at Gorizia cemetery. There are poppies with silk petals in front of the niche. Now that they are sewing Gorizia back together again, Haya might be able to move Ada. She won’t. There is nothing left to move. Ada is now little more than a handful. It seems silly to move little objects, little things. Little things can be carried in the pocket; they go with us.
The weather is getting warmer.
A small white cat with one eye and no nose creeps by Haya’s feet at the Parco della Rimembranza. And breathes its last. Here, right at Haya’s feet. Deterioration lies everywhere, Haya says. Haya looks a little at the dead kitten, a little at her shoes. My shoes are so unsightly, she says. I won’t buy shoes with round shoelaces any more. Round shoelaces always come undone. I could play bridge. With whom?
Haya closes her eyes. There on the bench at the Parco della Rimembranza beneath her eyelids surfaces the large eye of an ox, a wrinkled eye, a horrible, open eye. There is no person who can gaze like that, that way, like an ox. The huge eye watches Haya from the inside. It draws itself in, squints, then opens even more. How unpleasant, says Haya and gets up. What will I do with my time? wonders Haya, then sits again. I am dragging time along like a dog on a leash. This is becoming an effort.
A woman walks by with a dog. The dog wags its tail. It wants to go to Haya. In a high voice the woman says, Be good! DON’T bother the lady. The woman has narrow hips. Women with narrow hips have more trouble giving birth. Haya has broad hips. Mothers talk to their children, especially in parks where the children like to explore, they tell them, DON’T bother the lady! Children do not bother Haya. Even dogs do not bother her. But the people in charge boss around children and dogs—DON’T be a bother! In general, they speak with dogs and children the same way. That’s a no-no, nasty! they tell them. Maybe I should go mushrooming? wonders Haya. Collect medicinal herbs, brew herbal teas?
In Berlin once, many years before, Haya got to know Jarmušek, a painter, who brewed her berry teas. Red teas and purple teas, nearly black. In Berlin that year, at a flea market, Haya bought an old doll whose eyes wouldn’t close. Jarmušek told her, Dolls keep secrets even when their eyes are open. Then Haya and Jarmušek went to Nuremberg. Let’s go to Nuremberg, Jarmušek said. Nuremberg is the city of toys. So
Haya and Jarmušek went to Nuremberg in 1968 and looked at the toys, though they were already adults, over forty.
While in Nuremberg Haya studies the city. It is a green city; it has a lot of greenery. In Nuremberg Haya and Jarmušek discover stories about dolls. Nuremberg is an old city, almost a thousand years old. For seven hundred years people have been making dolls in Nuremberg; first little ones, then big ones. The little dolls are old, they are white clay dolls the size of a finger, they are little women and little men, little horsemen, little monks and remarkably little babies, who are little anyway. I would like to have a doll like that, says Haya, a little white baby. At the exhibition of dolls and toys someone says, Only Strasbourg dolls from the thirteenth century are older than the Nuremberg dolls. At the doll exhibition Haya and Jarmušek listen to the story of Nuremberg doll-making.
I don’t know whether we need this, this history, Haya says.
There are terrible dolls, Jarmušek says.
That is how Haya and Jarmušek learn that more than six hundred years before, two doll-makers—two Dockenmacher—live in Nuremberg, and that wooden dolls follow the clay dolls, and later there are dolls made of alabaster, wax, rags; there are colourful dolls and dolls dressed in the fashions of the day. They learn that toy production in general follows the making of dolls; that Georg Hieronimus Bestelmeier, a Nuremberg merchant and shop owner in the centre of the Old City, in his catalogue for 1798 lists 8,000 items produced in the Nuremberg workshops, including rocking horses, wooden blocks, doll’s houses completely furnished, kitchens for dolls with all the equipment, miniature shops, an array of pewter animals and other wind-up figures, children’s musical instruments and all sorts of other wonders.