“You mean the room we share with ten other couples?” I say with a sarcastic smirk. “That home?”
“No, you know—doing things the Jewish way. Keeping kosher, the prayers—”
I flinch. “I thought we agreed I didn’t have to be someone I’m not,” I say, suddenly defensive. “Are you changing your mind?”
“No, no,” he says, taking my hand. “But you’re doing some of it already, like the mikvah. Do you want me to…help you—”
“Not now. Don’t ask me that right now.” I pull my hand away.
“All right, all right.” He turns and looks out the window. It’s disorienting how quickly we got into this fight.
A few minutes pass, the track rhythm sounding less waltz than clock, ticking out agonizing seconds of silence.
“Gerta,” he says at last, “let me ask you this way: What do you want your Sabbath table to look like? When we finally have a real home.”
“Look like? I don’t know,” I say. “What we already do. Light the candles, sing some songs, eat dinner? What else is there?”
I’m not this out of touch, really. When I awkwardly circle the candles with my hands and repeat the prayers after him, I’m aware of the transcendence of it, the bubble of unseen light that surrounds us.
“Think about it, Gerta. When you think of a time you were truly happy, the most…at peace, what comes to mind?” He leans his head against the seat and fiddles with the silver ring on my finger.
Of course, I know the answer. Papa and Maria by the fireplace, playing viola and piano; a warm dinner, sweet mint iced tea in my glass. But no—there’s something further back. There’s the shadow memory of a woman’s freckled arms, and I’m young, so young, sucking my thumb and twirling her dark blond hair, and she is singing to me, in a different language, a different world.
I push the memory away. “That question feels…strangely selfish,” I say.
“What?” he asks, mystified. “Why?”
“Here we are, arguing about how to rest and eat and pray…these little things…What right do we have…”
The fact is, these aren’t little things. I don’t want to admit that home means as much as it does. I’m afraid that if I open the door a crack, the sorrow will never leave, will grow in me like a cancer.
“So,” he says, “you think it would honor our families if we went through the rest of our lives in mourning? Maybe living in an empty room? With a bare lightbulb overhead?”
“Forget it.” I sigh. “Why waste any time thinking about it? I don’t want to live in constant questioning. I just want to live my life. Our life.”
The train slows and pulls into a station. There’s the exchange of passengers. Babies cry, adjust, quiet. A pack of blond Polish boys walks through the car, laughing cruelly with menacing faces, scrutinizing people row by row. I don’t understand their language, but Lev does. He sinks into his coat and turns his head toward the window. We don’t speak until the train is settled again, moving through the countryside.
Lev says, after a long time, “You say you don’t want to live in constant questioning. Neither do I, Gerta. But I think there’s a time to wrestle and to shake your fist at the sky. And then there’s the time to admit that we’re not going to get any answers.”
This brings up such a rage in me.
Not because I disagree. I have my own history—I’ve trembled with the awareness of some other presence, something, someone, who knows my name.
No—I rage because I ache.
“All right,” I say, through a tight jaw, “what do you want your Sabbath table to look like?”
Lev gathers me between his strong shoulders. I lay my angry head on his chest under his red beard and listen to his voice resonate. He sighs.
“The sun’s about to set. The table’s laid with wine, two shiny loaves of braided bread covered with a cloth, candles in silver candlesticks. You come into the room in that dress I like and cover your head with white lace. You gather the flame toward your eyes and say the blessing. You cover your eyes with your hands and ask God for the secret desires of your heart. There are friends at the table who love us, and the weary and hungry who have come to our door. We break bread, we drink wine, we sing raucous songs. We laugh and let the cares roll off our shoulders and out the door. We say goodbye to our friends. Then you and I go to bed, and I kiss your face…your neck…your shoulders…and we go back to the Garden of Eden.”
Raindrops begin hitting the window, spreading into soft rivulets. He’s quiet; he’s said all he needs to. He curls his fingers around mine and looks out at the passing fields. I don’t regret saying yes to Lev. I love him. Not just because he loves me, but because he’s Lev.
My Lev.
Whatever our table looks like, whatever we do on that day of rest or any other day, if I have music, and I have Lev, I’m home.
“You know what I want?” I sit up, willing him to see my whole heart. “I want you to just be there. I want you to keep the light on when the horrors come, and let me do the same for you. I want to be seventeen and in love and to sing my heart out every chance I get. And I’m not going to trade that for anything. I’m not.”
“I’d never ask you to,” he assures me.
“Because it’s you, Lev. It’s you.”
We are slowing into the Kielce station. Lev reaches overhead and takes down the viola and our modest bag with all our worldly possessions: our travel papers, a change of clothes, Lev’s prayer book. On the platform are men in work caps, women in worn cotton dresses, weary grandmothers embracing grandchildren who were babies before the war. Each of them turns to look at us, some for an instant. More of them look us up and down and mutter things—“Żyd, brudny, nieczysty”—things like that. I don’t understand Polish, but I understand voices.
Our stay in Kielce is not beginning well.
Not one taxi will stop for us, though we hail for twenty minutes. Finally, a man with a donkey cart stops. He dismounts and pulls us close to the cart. He chews on his cigarette, spits and sighs hard.
“You here for the funeral?” he asks Lev, looking askance at the fringes hanging from his waist. “It’s that way. I have to hand it to you Jews—you’re brave to come back. Or stupid.”
“We’re just here to see what’s left of my family’s home. What funeral? Who died?”
He stares at us. “You kids didn’t know? On Planty Street, across from the park, you know, with the little stream? Forty-some Jews. Murdered. It was a bloodbath the whole day. Like they avenged the entire war on them. The police did nothing—in fact, they were in on it. How did you not hear about this?”
I feel bile rise in my mouth. I want to run back to the train, but it’s already pulled away. This station with its hanging baskets of flowers is another sham, like Theresienstadt with its concerts, plays and lectures. But Lev is bargaining with the man to give us a ride, and before I can argue, he’s helping me into the back of the cart.
“I heard the commissioner on the radio,” the man leans back to tell us. “Get this—he said, ‘The police showed incredible restraint; not a single shot was fired at the people.’ I guess the ones with the police bullets in their backs weren’t ‘the people.’ Anyway,” he says, “you should know I never had anything to do with any of this.” Lev looks at me sideways.
We have him take us the opposite direction from the funeral, staying well clear, and we arrive at a house on a corner. It is charming but a little run-down. A small garden on the side of the house seems to be growing only a trellis of neglected beans. Lev knocks at the door. A woman answers, drying her hands on her navy-blue apron. She’s in her fifties, a shock of white hair in two crossed braids atop her head. She is startled at the sight of us.
“Ech! Jews! What do you want?” she spits.
“Good morning, ma’am,” Lev says, with a slight bow of the head. I can’t believe he can be civil to her. “I wonder if you can help me. You see, this was my uncle’s house. I was wondering if anyone from this street surv—�
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“Didn’t they kill all of you?” she hollers. “How can you show your face? Get out of here! Get out!” People are watching us behind their curtains. We run down the street and turn a corner.
We will ourselves to be small and invisible as we risk approaching the vicinity of the funeral. Dozens of plain wooden coffins of all sizes lie in a trench surrounded by the small crowd, all that remains of the Jewish community of Kielce, once twenty-five thousand strong. Lev says he recognizes a few of the mourners. All of them look decades older. None of them are his relatives.
Surrounding the mourners is a ring of drunken youths shouting and laughing. They are kept at bay by a handful of uncommitted policemen. The survivors shovel the soil over the coffins and disband.
We leave ahead of them.
Lev and I stick to the side streets and small parks where the trees are dense and we can disappear into the shadows. He stuffs his tzitzit into his waistband, puts his curls under his flat cap and tucks his bearded chin into his coat collar. I take his cue and remove my head scarf. I have such a sharp vigilance in my chest that the slightest sound startles me. I’m panting from fear.
“Lev, we have to get out of here,” I plead, clutching his coat. “Take me out of here! Back to the station, please!”
“I will, my love, but we have to do one thing first, and then I promise we’ll leave—and never come back.”
He grabs my hand and we walk four blocks, quick but inconspicuous, until we come to a solitary house set back into a stand of birch trees. This time, we don’t knock on the door. Instead, Lev enters the gate, counts out eighteen steps along the side of the garden and four steps toward the house, crouches down and begins to dig with his hands. My chest is so tight, I can barely breathe.
“What are you doing?” I whisper. He does not answer. He has dug a hole as deep as his elbow and feels around inside. He suddenly looks up, pure joy on his face. A bit more digging, and what emerges from the hole are two silver candlesticks, wrapped in a disintegrating pillowcase.
“These were my mother’s,” Lev says, brushing them off and tucking them into his overcoat. “Now we can go.”
All the way back across the Polish countryside, from town to town, into the rubble cities of eastern Germany, we see with different eyes. People get on and off this train, hard faces caked with war and loss. Even the skinny children’s faces are lined with poverty and hatred, and they spit out their demands to their weary parents, or they don’t—can’t—talk at all. Lev’s learned to hide behind a newspaper when the gangs of boys get on the train. At more than one station we’ve seen them beating Jews on the platform, cheered by onlookers.
All these lives in ruin. I feel so small. Where can we go from here? Is there a yeshiva for Lev? Will some former Nazi give him a newspaper job? Are we up for the fight?
* * *
—
Bergen-Belsen’s yawning fences curl us back into the den where thousands still wait in limbo for an answer to the question, where? We don’t wait for an answer. We find Michah immediately and tell him of the massacre. He grits his teeth.
I don’t recognize Michah now as someone with whom I once shared intimate space. He is simply who he came here to be; his goal, to bring Jews to safety.
“We have to go now, Michah,” Lev demands. “How soon is the next ship leaving?”
“In three weeks,” he says. “Gerta has told you how you must get there?”
“Yes. On foot. We are ready.”
Michah slips an envelope into the hand of the British guard at the gate, nods, and we cross the threshold of Bergen-Belsen for the last time. He leads twelve of us, including Roza, across the devastated breadth of Europe. We walk for three weeks, finding the occasional respite in the barns of sympathetic villagers. It’s hot, and the forest floor is overgrown. Thankfully, Lev and I have only brought one bag between us, and Papa’s viola. It’s all we own, and that’s just fine.
We’re joined by others along the way, but they split off once we grow to fifteen or so. Larger groups raise suspicion, but small cohorts like ours are constantly moving across the continent in a thousand directions. We aren’t the only ones displaced by the war. A year on, everyone is still ravaged, shamed, trying to figure out why one was left and another was taken. Even the most cheerful greeting only partially hides the ubiquitous hollow stare.
* * *
—
It’s hard to believe—here it is, August, and we’re walking ankle-deep in high mountain snow somewhere in Switzerland. Michah overtakes us.
“Hey, the lovely Rausch-Goldszmits—wait a minute, will you?” Lev turns and feigns a little smile. He’s grateful to Michah for smuggling us, but it’s still hard for him to push away the image of Michah and me together.
“Gerta…” Michah almost touches my arm but thinks better of it. My name coming from his mouth is disorienting. “Can I speak to you?”
“Sure,” I say, and pull aside a bit. Lev casts a doubtful look at us. “It’s all right, Lev. Go ahead; I’ll catch up.”
Lev walks heavily up the hill, still within earshot. Michah and I hang back.
“I didn’t get around to saying thanks for taking care of my mother,” he says, sober in a way I’ve never seen him. “I’m glad she wasn’t alone at the end.”
“I was an orphan; she was a mother,” I say. “We helped each other.”
He hesitates. “I also wanted to say…I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Every time I saw you, I could only think of what I had lost. It was too much. I had to forget. The truth is, it was easier to pretend no one had names, or individual faces. Just focus on the cause—to get as many Jews to Palestine as I could, and that’s it. The girls”—the vapor from Lev’s parted lips comes faster as he overhears—“the girls just numb me. I can forget I’m actually still alive.”
The snow gets into our shoes. Lev’s pant cuffs are soaked; a line of sweat runs out from under the brim of his hat. A crow calls to its mate.
We come to a lookout point where we rest and take out some bread and fruit. The valley floor spreads out in a rainbow of greens below. A murmuration of starlings swirls on the air current.
“I forgive you, Michah,” I eventually manage to respond, handing him a torn-off piece of bread.
* * *
—
We finally reach the French port, and once all the smaller groups of refugees converge, we’re four thousand strong. The Oasis is an old boat, not built for passengers but for small industry, its hull rusted and its wooden siding peeling off of stripped nails. Lev and I ask each other with our eyes, Are we going to end our journey at the bottom of the Mediterranean?
The horn blows and the Oasis pulls out from the dock, heading, as far as the authorities know, for Istanbul under a false flag. Despite the sun, the deck is the only tolerable place to be. The heat belowdecks is hellish with the smell of sweat and sick. The sea wind offers enough relief to let us sleep in the open, as long as we cover our faces. Buckets of seawater are pulled up for us to wash with, but it makes my skin so dry, it begins to crack. One of the cooks renders cooking fat with herbs to rub into our chapped skin.
This is no cruise. Rations are meager, but we know how to survive on less than nothing. Bread and water and sleep are enough.
And love.
* * *
—
Almost a week in, I can feel a difference aboard. The air is decidedly balmier, but that’s not all; there’s a kind of buzzing energy. The captain shares the news that we are at last turning toward Haifa, just about thirty kilometers southeast. The excitement spreads and the air explodes with Hebrew and Yiddish folk songs. I understand a little Hebrew now; at the very least, I know all the words to “HaTikvah.”
One of the Haganah operatives managed to get several crates of oranges at the French port. Now is the time to pass them around. The sweetness of the fruit, the sunlight, the singing are intense and heady, and the exhilaration sweeps us in. Lev pulls me up a
nd grabs me around the waist, and we dance and sing with full force into each other’s faces, hilarity in our wild eyes.
Early that afternoon, Roza tells me a rumor about a faint ship on the horizon behind us. It’s been holding a straight course with the Oasis for hours. If it’s anything other than a British ship, we’re all right. The British have such a tight hold on immigration to Palestine that most of the ships that set out are turned around and their passengers sent to Cyprus, to dirty holding areas just like the concentration camps, girdled with barbed wire.
Michah finds us and confirms the rumor. “It’s not completely unusual,” he assures us. “Istanbul’s a busy port. But let’s go over the evacuation protocol again, just in case.”
Hours later, Roza and I are sitting against the wall of the main cabin, sun-tired and bored, quizzing each other on math theorems. Lev’s asleep beside me, his head resting on the viola case with his hat over his eyes.
Just then, whistles start blowing, and our handlers rally everyone to attention. The mystery ship is coming alongside the Oasis, too close to be denied any longer. It’s a gray naval vessel flying the Union Jack. We know what this means. We’re about to be boarded.
Guns are drawn from inside jackets and held at the ready.
“We can try again in a few weeks,” Michah shouts, in an absurd attempt to reassure us. “Refugee ships get turned back all the time.”
In the center of the chaos, I freeze as a string of memories scrolls across my mind—
The hasty burial of my mother. The burning city of Köln.
The screen of darkness crossing my face as the cattle-car door slides shut.
Being laid on the ground next to Lev for the first time.
The desires I’ve asked for over the Sabbath candles.
“Not us!” I yell. “We’re going to get to Haifa if we have to jump out and swim.”
What the Night Sings Page 13