Esfir Is Alive

by Andrea Simon

  When I heard him say that Jews were being targeted for their privilege and influence, I thought Mendel must be joking. The Jews in my world were in the trades or shopkeepers—tailors, bakers, butchers, painters, seamstresses, metal workers, shoemakers, photographers, carpenters, watchmakers. Most barely made a living and that lately was becoming harder. Even if we knew a Jew in the professions or government, that person was severely restricted or couldn’t work at all. Who were these Jews in power?

  I was the type of person who blamed myself first if something went wrong. In the case of Germany and Poland, in particular, they were the opposite. They blamed everyone else for their troubles, never themselves.

  Before going to sleep, I expressed something like this to Ida, and she said I was going to be a philosopher. I liked the sound of that and asked what it was. She said it is someone who tries to make sense of senseless things.

  “Now, this Hitler,” Ida said, angrily, “doesn’t care about making sense or how anyone is feeling. He wants to show the world that Germany is the best.”

  Ida was sounding familiar to me. It was her tone rather than her words. If I closed my eyes, and with a little imagination, it could have been Mendel himself speaking to me.

  She continued, “The masses listen to Hitler who stirs them into a frenzy to the point of despising anyone who isn’t a German. Hitler wants more land to add to his Third Reich. For people like him, there is never enough.”

  As Ida was talking, she had a newspaper in her hands. Unconsciously, she tore it into strips of varying lengths and twisted them into thin shredded cylinders, lining them in columns on her night table. When she finished with about eight, she started another column and so on. Before long, she had a good-sized selection of slender ammunition. Finally, Ida realized what she was doing and quickly slid the paper pieces together, gathered them in her hand, and headed for the trash basket. She let out a loud sigh.

  “I appreciate what you explained,” I said. “But maybe I am just too young to understand.” Now I was the one to say this.

  Then Ida got onto her bed and stood straight, holding out her arms. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Esfir, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  I applauded and she said that was from Hamlet by Shakespeare, the author who wrote King Lear. There was no end to Ida’s talents. If I was going to be a philosopher, Ida could surely be a lawyer the way she argued and spoke out, or she could be a writer or historian because she kept a journal like the one she made for me, or she could be a great actress like Sarah Bernhardt.

  IT BECAME PERSONAL. More and more Jews that we knew were being excluded from civil service and manufacturing jobs. The Jews of Brest, who by the latest count, numbered twenty-five thousand had to rely on their small trade and commerce, including supplying goods and services to the outlying peasants and city-stationed armed forces. Some Jews had small backyard factories, producing soap, cosmetics, sweets, and such. Many, like Ida, depended on dollars sent by relatives from America.

  For Jews, education was also becoming more problematic. Take Yossel, Freyde’s brother. He wanted to be a doctor. He had a year and a half to finish the Tarbut, but he was afraid that if he continued there, he wouldn’t be able to get into a university. Few Tarbuts were properly accredited, though the Brest one was an exception, but Yossel didn’t think it would last. His best chance would be to transfer to a public high school despite Jewish quotas. The government school in the area only accepted two Jews in a class of forty. After three attempts, Yossel gave up. No amount of bribing would help.

  Around the dining table one night he described that he had visited a cousin at a nearby university and was shocked. “The Jewish students had to sit in the left-hand section of the lecture room,” he explained. “And who knows how much longer these ‘ghetto benches’ would last. Soon Jews will have no place to sit.”

  Freyde and the other girls had two and a half years left of school, so they followed Yossel’s struggles carefully. Despite great sacrifice from their families, the girls had chosen the Tarbut because they had ambitions and their parents had encouraged them. Being female, they had even fewer chances of being accepted into a university. These doubts didn’t stop them from discussing what they wanted to be if they graduated from the university. Fanny said, “teacher,” Liba said, “something to do with fashion, maybe running a hat shop.” Liba conjectured that Ida would probably become a lawyer or even a judge, predictions Ida didn’t dispute. Rachel sat silently.

  “So Rachel, what about you?” Liba asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said, which seemed too honest for her. Immediately, she added, “Of course, my father wants me to run his business, and my aunt wants me to go into the theater like she did.”

  “I didn’t know your aunt was an actress,” Ida said.

  “Well, she did some Yiddish theater. She played Lady Macbeth.”

  Ida gave me one of her looks as if to say, “Esfir, do not tell Rachel that I was in a Shakespearean play.” And we all knew that Rachel’s father drove a droshky and didn’t communicate with his daughter.

  Not one of the girls mentioned getting married or having children. Probably they were afraid to say that in front of Ida, who would have surely made them feel like common conformists. I never felt that about Ida. The way she looked after me was strong enough proof that any child would be the luckiest in the world to have Ida as her mother.

  IDA’S JOURNAL, BOUND in red leather (mine was black) had been a present from her aunt Masha in America. Being her roommate, I had seen her write and draw pictures in it like I did, especially at night before she went to sleep. Once in a while she’d show me something—a sketch of a tree or a quotation that she was copying into my journal.

  One day, Ida’s journal was open on her bed and curiosity got the best of me. I couldn’t resist. Just my luck, Ida walked in the room and I backed away, mumbling that I was sorry. I was expecting the worst. If someone read my journal behind my back, I would never forgive them.

  But Ida was, well, Ida. She said that it was okay; I could look all I wanted. There was nothing there that was so secretive that I couldn’t see. Her aunt had sent her two journals. She had finished the first one and lent it to me.

  Me read Ida’s journal? It seemed wrong somehow—scary and wonderful. Scary that I might discover something I didn’t want to know about Ida and wonderful that she would share such a treasure with me.

  I shouldn’t have been so flattered. She admitted that she had never asked me before because she didn’t think her writings or drawings were special and couldn’t imagine anyone being interested. I should have known that Ida’s reasons would have nothing to do with overcoming shyness but more to do with modesty.

  I turned the pages and skimmed each, looking for my name and anyone I recognized. I was amazed at how much disjointed material she could fit on each page: indecipherable pencil scribblings and smudges; fine-lined, cross-hatched ink sketches; phrases in Yiddish and Hebrew; snatches of Russian and Polish poetry; increasingly worrisome world events; amusing anecdotes attributed to Ida’s family members.

  On a page written that winter during a weekend visit to Volchin, Ida had described one day’s activities: “Stop by butcher and baker, pick up items ordered by Bashke . . . sit on tree stump while Sala happily ice-skates with her friends.” In a few bold strokes, she captured Sala’s graceful form as she pirouetted solo like a ballerina and glided with friends in a hora-like circle dance. “Sala so popular,” she wrote. “Less guilt for leaving her.”

  The adjoining page showed Sala’s arms entwined with another girl, taller and heftier. The girls seemed to be gossiping, with their faces almost touching. Ida wrote on the bottom, “My sister and her best friend, Hanna. Will I ever be that close to another girl?”

  When I read that sentence, I put my palm over the page as if to push the journal away, also to quiet the raging thump in my heart as its beat tripled with jealousy. How could I ever expect Ida to feel that way abo
ut me—me being even younger than her youngest sister? Now that I was nine, and had been living with Ida for more than two years, I was still not up to snuff.

  Toward the end of her journal, there were only a few pen marks and random words, and a blank half page, ending with “Goodbye Journal Number I,” as if she had been losing interest in writing her thoughts. That’s how it was when you got something new. You’d feel so dedicated to the object and think this would always be the case.

  There was a torn page folded in the back. It had horizontal blue lines; this was not a page from Ida’s journal. When Ida looked over at me and saw the note, she snatched the journal away.

  “Sorry, Esfir, I just remembered I have something there that is personal.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said, not revealing that I had read part of it: “I can’t wait to tell you this in person, to hold your beautiful slender hand in mine.” And I saw enough to read the last line, “Tenderly, Mendel.”

  I think I turned redder than her journal cover, as if I walked into the outhouse and discovered my aunt Perl squatting down over the hole.

  Ida slammed the journal shut, put it in her suitcase, and slid it under her bed. She had an identical red journal in her hand, the second one. She opened it near the beginning. She looked me up and down and I saw she was writing something.

  “What are you writing about, can I ask?”

  “You, Esfir, I’m writing about you. And I’m sketching your face.”

  I wiped the spit between my lips and smoothed my hair.

  “Don’t be self-conscious. I want you to look natural. This way I can remember you just the way you are.”

  Okay I would probably never be Ida’s longed-for best friend like her sister Sala had. But her wanting a picture and description of me, in the beginning of her new journal, was enough.

  Twenty-Three

  AS THE MONTHS came, my mind was like a stopwatch, frozen on certain events reported in the newspapers. I began to keep a timeline in my own journal. There was so much that occurred; Ida helped me choose what she thought had the most significance for Jews.

  In April, anti-Jewish riots broke out in Dabrowa, Cracow, Budapest, and Vilna. In July, the Third Reich ordered special identity cards for Jewish Germans. In September, Mussolini canceled the civil rights of Italian Jews; Jewish lawyers were forbidden to practice in Germany. In October, the Germans demanded that Jewish passports be stamped with the letter J.

  That same month, about seventeen thousand Polish Jews from towns across Germany, many of whom had resided in Germany for decades, were taken—in various ways—for deportation to be handed over to Poland, where they were already citizens. Some were allowed to enter Poland; most were interned at various border points and sent to military barracks, where they lived in appalling conditions.

  I particularly remember Mendel’s reaction to this news. One night, he was in the living room with Ida. Perl told Ida several times to get ready for dinner. Mendel remained on the couch, not seeming to get the hint. Perl gave up and invited him to join us. Ida grasped her neck as if stricken with a lethal pain. Then she grinned and I thought she was going to embrace Perl in front of everyone.

  Perl didn’t like to discuss world events when Mr. Kozak was around. She never knew if someone would say a bad word about the Poles. Of course, Mendel didn’t know the house rules and even if he did, I don’t think he could have controlled himself. He was like Ida in that way.

  “Now, there is no getting away from it,” Mendel said.

  There was silence. All eyes were on Perl. All ears were expecting her to ask Mendel not to talk about politics. Instead, she said, “Getting away from what, Mendel?”

  “Those assimilated German Jews who had thought they’d be immune to persecution, and distanced themselves from Eastern European Jewry, now have to face reality.”

  “How true,” Ida said, her eyes twinkling.

  Here was another rare time, I was disappointed in Ida. The way she fawned over Mendel was beginning to make me sick. Okay he was a serious person, and I could admit he was a good talker, with good ideas. But he didn’t have to sound so “Mendel-like” with a bunch of girls at the dinner table.

  Mr. Kozak said, “Yes, I see your point, Mr. Feigen. We all have to be on our toes.”

  This deportation was the prelude to the worst event of 1938, beginning on the night of November 9 and continuing the next day—a Thursday when I was in my fourth grade class, a week after my ninth birthday. It was called Kristallnacht or Crystal Night.

  We read in the Yiddish newspaper that in retaliation for the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a young Jewish refugee, the Nazis instigated crazed rioters and gangs to smash shop windows of Jewish businesses in cities, towns, and villages throughout Germany and German-controlled lands. Stores were looted, thousands of synagogues were damaged or leveled, Jewish homes were burned, Jews were assaulted, ninety-one Jews were killed, and some thirty thousand prominent Jews were arrested and deported. It was the pogrom of pogroms.

  TWO DAYS BEFORE I left for the holiday in Kobrin, I found a parcel on my bed. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. I reached in my glass that held colored pencils and pens and found a scissor. Quickly, I cut the string and opened the paper to discover a brand-new black leather journal, like the one I already had. There was a note on top: “Dear Esfir. I know you’re at the end of your journal, and you have been writing in tiny letters on the margins. It’s time for a new one. Happy Chanukah, Love, Ida.”

  Like the first one, it was entitled, Journal of Important Words on the first page, only she added, “II” after it. And like the first one, it began with a quotation. I expected it to be by Peretz, and it was: “But memory can refine everything and improve it.”

  There were no limits to Ida’s thoughtfulness, not that I want to paint her as a saint, but it’s natural to remember good about a person, or the very bad. All I had for Ida was a white scarf with long fringes that my mother had knitted. It didn’t compare to a journal but I never claimed to be as thoughtful as Ida. My mother had made identical scarves for the other girls, but I requested a different color stripe on each. I gave the one with a red stripe to Ida. Red was her favorite color.

  The next day, I was packing my suitcase in my room when I heard a commotion downstairs and I went to investigate. In the parlor, I saw the Midlers hanging their coats on the coatrack. They had come for a short visit and to take Ida home. Perl greeted them as if they were relatives.

  Mr. Midler said, “Hello, Esfir, you’re looking so grown-up. I haven’t seen you in how long?”

  Ester said, “It was a year and a half ago, last summer, July 1937, that is.”

  “Why, Ester, you have a good memory,” Perl said.

  “Only for certain things,” Sala said, sarcastically.

  “What do you mean by that?” Ester asked.

  “Girls do you have to argue the first thing when we get into the house?” Mrs. Midler said.

  “Yes, at least wait until we sit down to tea.” Mr. Midler winked.

  I loved his sense of humor.

  The Midler girls came up to our room for a little private time away from the adults and vice versa for the adults.

  “Esfir, why don’t you show Miriam to Ester?” Ida asked.

  A wash of heat zoomed up my neck. It was okay for me and Ania to dress up Miriam, and we were quiet about it because we didn’t want anyone to think we were still babies. But there was no doubt that Ester, who was nearly eleven, was far too old to play with dolls. At that moment, I could have killed Ida.

  “Who is Miriam?” Ester asked.

  “Nobody,” I said.

  “Esfir is shy about showing off,” Ida said.

  I was not accustomed to being angry at Ida. Now, she was not only embarrassing me, but insulting. Couldn’t she tell that I didn’t want to pursue the subject by my reddening skin? Couldn’t she sense that by saying “nobody,” I wanted to avoid the subject?

  Ida
in her own way was trying to find something for Ester and me to have in common other than a similar first name. Further prodding from Ester and Sala gave me no choice. It was bad enough I had to unveil Miriam, but I had to reveal that I hid her under my bed, two secrets Ida gave away in one request.

  “Here she is,” I said, standing Miriam up on my bed. “Now you’ve seen her, I’ll put her back.”

  “No, don’t put her back,” Sala said. “I think she is beautiful. Like a movie star. And that dress, it’s shiny.” Sala rubbed the material between her finger and thumb as if she were a fabric buyer evaluating the quality.

  “She’s okay,” Ester said, walking to the window, peering toward the scene outside with fake interest.

  Being from a family with three girls, I was certainly familiar with what we said and didn’t say, what we felt and what we pretended to feel, how we competed and how we acted as a unit.

  As if it wasn’t uncomfortable enough with all these girls, Ania suddenly appeared by my opened door. She stopped in place and said to me, “Sorry, Esfir, I didn’t know you had company. Your aunt Perl told me I could come up.”

  I introduced everyone. The Midler girls sat on Ida’s bed and Ania and I on mine, with Miriam in between. Ania had mentioned that she just came from church where she was helping her uncle, Father Janusz, take food packages to a convent that cared for poor families. Ania wore a small gold cross around her neck that she had just received from the Mother Superior and she was sliding it back and forth on its chain.

  Suddenly, Ania sat up straight. She must have noticed that Ester also wore a necklace, only hers featured a silver Star of David. It was as if she just realized that she was the only non-Jew in the room. Usually, at Perl’s Ania met a mix of people: Poles like Mr. Kozack and Sonia, the woman who helped clean the house; Belorussians like Maria, who played with Freyde in the young people’s orchestra, and a girl who was Fanny’s coworker at her after-school job setting up stalls at the market. And then the Jewish boarders.