What the Night Sings

by Vesper Stamper

  “You’re about to get your wish, then,” Michah says.

  The engines rev and we begin moving faster. We’re so close to the shores of Palestine, we can practically feel the sand under our feet. When we’re several hundred meters from shore, a sharp announcement crackles over the loudspeaker:

  “Everyone! Gather your belongings! Leave what you don’t need! Abandon ship! To the lifeboats!” Whistles and air horns sound around us as the Haganah members shepherd us, women and children, into the lifeboats. “If you are a good swimmer, and only if you know you can go the distance, give your things to someone you trust and go now! Now!”

  The swimmers climb down the ladders. Lev takes off everything but his tzitzit and pants and gives me his clothes. I grab on to him in sudden panic.

  “Lev, no! Get in the lifeboat with me!”

  Roza holds me back. “You know they won’t let him,” she says. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  “I’ll find you, Gerta,” he shouts. “You know the instructions. We’ll meet on the shore. This is almost over. Baruch Hashem!”

  With that, Lev climbs down and jumps into the open ocean.

  Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba

  —a man chants by the edge of the sea, the saltwater lapping his ankles and pulling away into spiraling eddies—

  b’alma di-v’ra chirutei,

  v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon

  uv’yomeichon uv’chayei d’chol beit yisrael,

  ba’agala uvizman kariv, v’imru: Amen.

  Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name

  throughout the world which He has created according to His will.

  May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,

  and within the life of the entire House of Israel,

  speedily and soon; and say, Amen.

  Lev hasn’t arrived onshore. Neither have about thirty who thought they were good swimmers. It’s been two hours since we abandoned ship. The beach, miraculously, was empty, a small, cup-shaped bay where no ship could have anchored—no docks, no port. Just sand. Haganah handlers took everyone they could into hiding, including Roza, but I didn’t go with them. I have to wait for Lev. Because he’s coming.

  I know it.

  I duck inside an abandoned utility building about a hundred meters from the water. Through the small window, I watch the ocean roll, the rickety Oasis breaking up as it smashes against the rocks. Large, dark bubbles form on the surface of the water—the floating bodies of those who couldn’t “go the distance.”

  Where is Lev. Where is Lev. Where is Lev. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight…

  I wait for hours in the mildewy shed, the tidewater just barely seeping in under the door. I silently practice my Wohlfahrt études, without the bow, just the fingering, simply to calm my pounding heart. Exhaustion finally overtakes me.

  I wake up in a panic.

  What if Lev is looking for me? Opening the door a crack, I look for anyone who might be watching to catch refugees. Not a soul is there. Only swollen bodies making their way to the shore, carried on the drifting surf. I don’t let myself look for Lev among them.

  Of course he is alive. Of course he is.

  He’ll need the papers. He’s probably there already, and he’s going to need the papers.

  In an instant I decide to make my way to the kibbutz. There wasn’t time to write back and forth for legal sponsorship from Ruth. We can take care of that when we get there. Rifling through our bag, I find our forged papers. According to them, we’re Palestinian Jews, born and married in Jerusalem, living on a kibbutz near Nahariya. Tucked into the envelope is a small piece of paper with the name of my mystery aunt and coded instructions for getting to the commune.

  I start frantically shuffling down the dusty Middle Eastern road flanked by scrubby bushes. The cool morning light has given way to a blazing sun. I can’t figure out, according to the instructions, how much farther to the kibbutz. I haven’t had water since the ship, and the ground seems to shift and roll beneath my feet.

  Just then I hear footsteps running at full speed toward me. I have nowhere to hide. I clutch the satchel and viola to my chest and brace myself for the inevitable tackle of a British soldier, the demand for papers. The footsteps stop beside me.

  It is Lev.

  Encrusted in dried saltwater and sand, he’s panting and beginning to swoon. In the distance ahead, we see the gate to the kibbutz.

  I awake in a soft bed with clean sheets. It’s hot and dry, and I’m not sweating but desperately thirsty. I’ve been unconscious since Lev and I collapsed together on the threshold of the kibbutz. I’m in a hut of some kind, with a glassless, shuttered window on each wall. There is a small kitchen across the room. At the foot of my bed is the bedspread that Hélène crocheted for our wedding. Lev stands at a window, his prayer shawl over his shoulders, whispering prayers he thinks I can’t hear.

  We must have made it. This must be our house in the kibbutz. It’s tiny and spare, but it’s ours. The view from the window is like nothing I’ve ever seen. The light is glorious and…full. I don’t know what I expected when Michah first described it to me, but it’s both exactly like I pictured and nothing like it. It’s a land of blue and pale gold that goes on, blending into soft lines at the sea—not like the green fields and forests of Germany, but not like the gray, desolate camps, either.

  Lev finishes his morning prayers and folds the shawl as if handling a newborn baby. I try not to distract him as I sit up in bed, but he sees me and smiles. I start to speak, but he puts his finger to his lips. He fills a pitcher of water at the kitchen sink, picks up a basin and a towel and brings them to me. He sits on the bed and looks into my face. He runs his fingers through my hair, clearing stray strands away from my neck as he recites my prayer for me.

  I thank You, O living and eternal King,

  because You have graciously restored my soul to me;

  great is Your faithfulness.

  He puts the basin under my hands and pours water over them, back and forth. I cup my hands and he pours water in them, and I splash my face. He holds the pitcher to my lips, and I rinse my mouth into the basin. He dries my face and hands, and kisses my eyes, the tip of my nose, my lips and each fingertip.

  This is how my first day begins in Eretz Yisrael.

  I wave goodbye to Lev as he backs the jeep out of the driveway. The wheels kick up a bit of dust, and I can’t tell whether it’s the aridness or his hastiness to get to Tel Aviv. Six months have gone by in an instant. It’s late winter here near Nahariya, but the rains have been sparse.

  Lev has started a newspaper on the kibbutz. He’ll be away for three days buying parts for a salvaged printing press. I’ll miss him, but I’ll get to spread out in the bed by myself, a relief in this heat.

  This is an old kibbutz, and there are some members who’ve been here from its beginning. They don’t all like us. Some think we’ve brought too much “baggage,” and they don’t want to hear our stories. They wish we’d move on and be quicker about our work.

  My aunt Ruth knows better, though. She helps us talk about the predicament we’re in: robbed of family, marrying strangers, bringing babies into a world that tears them from their mothers’ arms.

  This morning, the group of us survivors gathers at Ruth’s house for our monthly meeting. In the doorway, she wraps me in her tan, muscular arms and holds me in the way only an aunt can, planting a kiss on my cheek that’s both soft and firm. Everyone else gets a wave or a pat on the back.

  “My Gerta,” she says, with her arm still around me. “Come help me in the kitchen.”

  Ruth and Roza and I make lemonade and put out trays of cookies while she tells funny stories about her and my father as children. She puts on records of slow jazz so we can relax before the intensity of our meeting.

  “Life is good,” says a Dutch woman, “freedom is good, but starvation leaves its mark, like rough rope on your wrists, always rubbing, always making a n
uisance of itself.”

  “When I want to leave the past in the past, it follows me like a begging dog,” says a man who survived five camps.

  There’s a shaft of morning light from the window, and I collapse into Ruth’s old cracked and chafed leather chair, which is prematurely aged the same as we all were in the camps. It heaves under me as I lean over for more lemonade and another cookie. I was starved beyond recognition when the first British soldier walked through the barracks door, only thirty kilos. Now I eat, and eat.

  Fullness has only emptiness to compare itself to.

  I eat for more than myself—I eat for six million. It’s soul food, eternal nourishment—served, as it is, alongside bitterness. But I love to fill my mouth with the sweetness of freedom.

  What can a girl do who has refused to die?

  The meeting ends and morning work begins. We are planting a new orange grove.

  The heat is subsiding a little, but I’m more woozy planting today than on even the hottest days. Still, we get through by singing. Twenty members of the kibbutz are on our team. We each strap two canteens of water on our belts and dig. We’ll dig every one of the five hundred holes by hand over the next week.

  In the greenhouse are saplings a meter high, which get loaded onto the truck and driven through the dust. This is not the lush farmland or forest of Europe, but desert and wilderness, with hot, salty ocean wind that sucks the moisture from our lips. I lower a baby orange tree into a hole, and my partner shovels the dirt back over the root ball.

  It’s too hot to continue past noon. We all go back to our homes to wash and rest. But I grab a pad of manuscript paper and head back out. I’m energized by a new project: I am collecting songs.

  The Jews here are from all over the world: Ashkenazim from Europe; Sephardim from Spain, Africa, Greece; Mizrahim from the countries here around us; Americans; Sabras, who’ve been here for millennia—all with their own languages. We sing Hebrew songs at our meetings, but usually someone will share one from their childhood, in their native tongue.

  And a change is happening. I’m playing viola less—it’s been under the bed for days now—and I’m singing more. All the time, in fact, in the meetings, special concerts, gatherings with other kibbutzim. And the songs filling my mind and mouth are these Jewish songs.

  Last week, I told the cultural chairwoman about my idea of compiling a songbook, and she agreed to let me and Roza do it. Lev’s going to typeset it on a cream paper, with an orange cover. We’ll call it HaEtz Tapuz—The Orange Tree.

  Roza and I go from door to door, about five households a day, to notate the songs. Aunt Ruth speaks several languages and comes with us to translate. Not everyone is a good singer, to put it kindly, but it’s fun, and I go home each day feeling more connected to my new family. My thirsty roots feel planted in the ground for the first time.

  I’m sitting at Ruth’s table, and the sun is hanging low over the sea. The Sabbath is coming, but I’ve been too busy to prepare. To be honest, when it’s just me alone in the hut, I get lazy about it. I wish I had Lev’s fervor.

  Ruth and her husband aren’t religious. They don’t work on the Sabbath, but they have a fairly loose understanding of what constitutes “work” anyway and usually spend their free time dancing to jazz records.

  “Gerta,” she says as we dip bread into a dish of olive oil, “I have something for you.” She hands me an envelope and takes down her long braid. Her thick silver hair falls over her dark shoulders, and she gathers and plaits it again.

  “I never get mail, except Maria’s letters,” I say. “What is it?”

  “Open it and see,” she says, with an enigmatic smile.

  “ ‘Dear Ms. Rausch,’ ” I read aloud. “ ‘It is with pleasure that I extend you an invitation to audition for the fall semester at Tel Aviv Conservatory….’

  “Aunt Ruth! What is this?”

  She pours me another glass of lemonade. “Well, we can’t let a flower wilt away in the desert sun, can we?”

  “But what about Lev?” I immediately think of the impossibility. “I can’t just leave—”

  “He knows. He’s not just picking up equipment in Tel Aviv. Things are in motion.” She winks.

  I don’t jump up and down about this. No, all the possibilities seep into me slowly. I cover my mouth and stare at the satisfied face of my father’s sister. Quietly I get up and nestle myself next to her in her chair and wrap my arms around her entirely.

  OUT OF FOREST FIRES COME NEW AND STRONGER SAPLINGS, reads a tapestry above the kitchen sink, embroidered with orange blossoms and fruit.

  A mother outside shouts to her children that it’s time to come inside and wash up, and I realize that I have to get back to light the Sabbath candles. I embrace Ruth again, gulp down my lemonade and run home, yelling a hasty goodbye over my shoulder.

  I scrub my face and hands from the heat and dust and pull on my special Sabbath blouse, a dark gray gauzy one with black flowers. As I fasten the iridescent black buttons, I catch notice of the number tattooed on my arm—A28865—from the day I lost my name in a distant world. I draw my breath in deeply and drink in the cooling air. A sweet taste is in my mouth like honey.

  Quickly, though, my smile fades as I look out the open door.

  The first star has appeared in the sky.

  The matches are lying next to the silver candlesticks on the table. The challah loaves are still in their box from the bakehouse, the wine bottle sealed. I’ve missed the start of the Sabbath.

  What would Lev say? I’ve never asked him—can I light the candles after sunset? What would he do?

  I stand in front of the unlit candles. There’s still a lot I don’t know about Lev—or about how to do this “grown-up” business. Some things we remember from our fathers, but no one taught us what it meant to run a home, to build a new life. No one told me what to do if I missed lighting the Sabbath candles before sunset.

  What do I do now?

  I watch the second star appear in the deepening blue black outside. My pulse rushes through my neck to my chest like a song. And before I know exactly what I am doing, I’m striking the match.

  I wave the flames’ light in toward me slowly. With my eyes covered, I feel it again: this mysterious presence, like a stranger you keep spotting in unconnected times and places. A delicious breeze blows in from the open door and ruffles the lace covering my head. Ask for the desire of your heart. I lower my hands and open my eyes, and the flames dance before me. I am transfixed by the light.

  Suddenly something pulls me toward the twilight. I turn and run out the door, past the grove, the tractor, the community building, past the houses and the reservoir ditches and out onto the cliff overlooking the sea. The moon is huge on the horizon, just shy of full, and it shines a silver road on the surface of the water. The sensation I’m feeling bursts forth from my lips. I’m laughing, so hard that I fall onto the ground in a wild delirium, and my cheeks hurt with a delightful pain. Rolling and groaning with exhausted joy, I grow still, lying on my side, watching the moon rise, and I fall asleep here, alone on the edge of the world.

  When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.

  Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

  The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad.

  Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev!

  Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!

  He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

  Psalm 126

  The summer before I entered eighth grade, I emerged from sleepaway camp with a new understanding of myself. It was as though someone opened the door and said, “You don’t need to apologize for yourself anymore. Walk out into the sunshine.” This newfound self-acceptance came from a single source: music. My camp counselor
had Tracy Chapman and Edie Brickell on repeat, and it was like hearing an echo of my own voice. I eventually went to an arts high school in Manhattan with other young artists and musicians, building for ourselves deep identities based on ability and aspiration.

  There’s a problem with that, however. When you decide early on who you “truly are,” it can trick you into thinking that you were destined to live by a certain script. And when you’re out on your own and you realize that there is no script, you might panic.

  Several years ago, I was rear-ended by a texting driver, which resulted in my arm being partially paralyzed. I completely lost the ability to play guitar—I had been a touring musician—and it took me a full year of rehab before I could reliably draw again. I had to relearn everything, even how to lift a fork to my mouth. This wasn’t in the script. A huge element of my deeply ingrained identity had been smashed. Like Gerta, I had hinged my future on a set of expectations, which depended on life’s machine running with no glitches. Being disabled cast a pall over every area of my life: my ability to drive, hold a baby, cook, hug or shake hands, let alone create art and music. How could I live my life? Without my script, who was I?

  When my neurosurgeon gave me the unfortunate news that my paralysis was permanent, I did something that, given the extent of my injury, didn’t quite make sense: I applied to graduate school for a master’s in illustration. Whether it was to find another way to draw that wouldn’t hurt so much or something else, I wasn’t sure, but it felt like moving forward, and that’s the only thing I knew to do.

  In the first semester of our master’s program, we were given the assignment of illustrating a book. I had previously written albums’ worth of songs and poetry—I had even written a novel, which sat in a drawer somewhere—but I had never thought of myself as a “writer.” I thought I’d illustrate a classic, like Jane Eyre or the Arabian Nights, or that I’d write a few lines about something that interested me, and lean more heavily on pictures to tell the story.