Jaffa Beach: Historical Fiction

by Fedora Horowitz

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  How cozy it felt to sit around the dining-room table, covered with a starched white damask tablecloth, sipping the strong Turkish coffee and nibbling from the Cremshnitt torte, a product of Charlotte’s skilled hands. Only one month had passed since they moved from Jaffa, but to Otto it seemed much longer.

  “Willkommen, welcome to our little German colony, and you must call me Lotte,” Charlotte Gruber had greeted him on the day he came to see the Bauhaus building on Yehuda Halevi Street, where an apartment on the third floor was available for rent.

  Sigmund Hochmeister, the double-bass player and a friend from their days in the KuBu, informed him about it. He lived across the street and had nagged Otto, “Nowadays those apartments are in such demand, they go like hot bagels; you’d better hurry.” At the front door of the balconied building, Otto met Bruno Herbst, an oboe player and an acquaintance from the Leipzig Conservatory who, besides teaching oboe, had a job on the side as a real-estate broker.

  “The rooms are spacious,” Otto said after visiting the apartment, turning his hat in his hands, visibly embarrassed, “but I doubt that my wife could walk the steps to the third floor. She is not well. Entschuldig, I am sorry to have bothered you.”

  “Warten,” Charlotte Gruber who followed them upstairs shouted, “Bruno wait! Not long ago I heard you say that you’d love to have a view of the entire city of Tel-Aviv. Here is your opportunity. Switch with Herr Schroder. He could take your apartment on the second floor while you move up to the third.”

  “I would never impose,” Otto started, but Bruno Herbst laughed and stopped him in mid-sentence. “A woman’s brain works much faster than ours. Welcome to our building, Herr Schroder. Have your movers take my furniture up before they move yours in.”

  The Schroders didn’t own much furniture. Otto had sold the piano. It had been paid for with Gretchen’s jewels at a time when he still hoped she’d play again. But now he needed money for schlisselgelt, the initial deposit, and the only way to have such a large sum was by selling the piano. Otto promised himself that as soon as he acquired more students he’d buy an upright. Anyway, the stairs couldn’t have accommodated a grand.

  “Herr Schroder,” the gentle voice of Hugo Gruber woke him from his reverie, “we haven’t heard your opinion. You’ve been very quiet this evening.”

  They were again discussing politics. And Otto knew that they’d continue to talk until late at night. What’s the need? Didn’t I participate in intellectuals’ discussions in Germany? And where did that lead? These talks don’t serve any purpose, but his European manners stopped him from speaking his mind.

  “Excuse me,” Otto arose, “I’m worried about Gretchen. I left her asleep two hours ago. I must go upstairs to check on her. She doesn’t sleep more than two hours at a stretch.”

  “I could go,” offered Charlotte, moving her chair aside.

  “You are doing too much for us as it is, Frau Gruber. Please sit, Danke Schon.”

  As he closed the door behind him, he heard Charlotte say, “I pity him so much, I pity both of them. It’s terrible, they move like living cadavers.”

  True, Otto recognized. But since moving to Tel-Aviv, he observed the beginning of changes in Gretchen, changes for which he was grateful to Lotte. Charlotte Gruber was keeping his wife company while he was at rehearsals or concerts. Gretchen wasn’t yet part of the colony’s evening meetings, but the fact that they spoke her language gave her sustenance and to Otto, new hopes.

  Maybe I was mistaken when I chose to live in Jaffa. Why did I think my co-religionists would be unkind to Gretchen?

  Gretchen was peacefully asleep, but Otto tossed from side to side, on the broken sofa in the living room. He began the habit of sleeping alone after his nightmares intensified. He could hear himself howling, the same long howl he had heard from his daughter that fateful night when she was dragged away by that monster Heinz,” Muti, Muti, help me!”

  Had she seen her hidden behind the bushes? The look in her eyes told him that she did. She screamed, “Papa, Papa,” though she was told not to ever mention his name. Yes, she probably saw him. A little girl of thirteen whose cowardly father, coward, coward, coward, heard the ugly laugh of his brother-in-law, “Mieschling, mongrel, your father cannot hear you. He’s rotting in jail, or already in hell, the dirty Jew.”

  The train took a grieving Gretchen and a petrified Otto out of Germany to freedom, to Switzerland, in a dangerous escapade with false passports, obtained at the last minute with the help of Wolfgang Schultz, the cellist’s brother, a Wehrmacht general. But Otto could see only Ruthie’s eyes and hear his inner voice, coward, coward, coward, ringing in his ears.

  Ruthie was never found. Otto visited many survivors who arrived in Palestine straight from the DP camps. He asked, he begged, but they had no answer. Otto even got an appointment with Chief Rabbi Herzog, who headed the search for displaced families, to no avail.

  “Ruthie,” Gretchen sighed.

  Otto’s body arched, ready to jump. It was a false alarm. His thoughts returned to his neighbors. Yes, it was a good move. Nice people, Hugo and Charlotte Gruber. Doctor Hugo Gruber, former professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Dresden, a man without a profession in Eretz Israel. They and their twin boys arrived in the early thirties and enthusiastically joined a kibbutz. “We loved it,” Charlotte told him, “we were old Zionists; it was our dream come true. Not for one moment did we think of Hugo’s asthma. Even after he got sick, we still didn’t want to leave. It was our home, though it was difficult for the Frau Doktor,” she pointed at herself,” to clean the toilets.” Everybody has a job to do,’ I told Hugo, who wanted to protest. When his cousin offered Hugo to keep the books in his haberdashery, we moved out. Our boys cried.”

  “But I understand they live on a kibbutz now,” Otto said, a bit confused.

  “After high school they returned livnot uleibanot.” She translated, “To build and be rebuilt, physically and spiritually. But we are worried now, after they joined the Palmach.”

  Otto remembered the ardent conversations between his friends. Sigmund’s son joined the Irgun, an underground and very aggressive organization. Why couldn’t all Jews, for once, be on the same side of the fence?

  The one who regularly tried to make peace between the friends was Bruno Herbst, a lanky man, whose German wife had divorced him shortly after she became a member of the National Sozialist Partei. A former cabaret dancer, she was inflamed by the Nazi propaganda about the purity of the German race. “You Jews should go to Palestine,” she told him. Without malice, he repeated it to his friends saying, “It was her best advice.”

  Mazal was Bruno’s girlfriend, a Moroccan with luscious copper skin, eyes like two black pearls, and kinky hair in which no comb could make its way through. She wore big golden hoops in her ears and laughed wholeheartedly, showing her small regular teeth, when she tried to teach her Yekim friends the correct Hebrew pronunciation. The two women, “the Shwarze” as Charlotte called Mazal, and Charlotte, competed as to which of them could help Gretchen recuperate faster.

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  It would take a knife, Shifra felt, to cut the tension building around her. Lately Musa had acquired a new habit almost every evening; closing himself up in his mother’s house and conferring with her. When Shifra asked him what was happening, his mouth was as closed as a bank vault. He became impatient even with Selim.

  “Selim, not right now, I am tired,” she heard him say when the child chimed, seeing his father return from work, “Abu Selim, Abu Selim, it’s time we play!”

  She knew how much Musa loved to hear his darling son call him “Selim’s father.”

  If he wasn’t busy with his mother, then he was at the chaikhana, the tea house, or at meetings with the mukhtar. When he returned home frowns furrowed his forehead. Shifra still felt elated when Musa’s arms tightened around her body, his warm breath on her nape, thrilling her as at the beginning of their marriage. But his attention to her had changed. G
one were the poems he recited while his eyes watched her like two burning coals. Gone too were the long caresses which made her body shiver with pleasure. He was always in a hurry.

  At Musa’s request, Ahmed started to teach Selim rudiments from the Koran and now the child was chanting them all day long, making her head spin. Though she still coached Nur on her English, and sometimes sewed dresses for Rama, Shifra felt that she had too much free time. She had finished sewing the skirt and blouse she made for herself. The hem of the skirt was just below the knee, but she didn’t dare wear it yet.

  She missed the time when she had been busy sewing and embroidering, when at the end of the day she was so tired that she’d fall asleep like a log. She didn’t think much about the future then. She had a roof over her head, Samira hovered over her like a mother hen, and Musa made her heart beat faster anytime he looked at her. She tried to forget where she came from. Anytime she thought of her parents, she chased those memories away. For them she was dead. She was an outcast…but was she really?

  Thinking of the day she met Chana on the beach, Shifra’s heart cringed at how she lied to her old friend. Now she longed for her old way of life; she missed Shula and Chana and their open, confiding friendship. In her ears, Chana’s shouts of surprise and happiness still rang.

  And shortly after she found Musa’s gun in the shed she realized that he, too, kept secrets. Would he ever tell her what he was doing with a gun in the middle of the night?

  The visits with Otto Schroder and his wife were special. At the time she tried to convince herself that their enthusiasm about Selim’s musical talent was the reason for her desire to go back. Now she knew that she found solace in their company, just as the violin music soothed her anxious soul.

  Did their haste in moving out of Jaffa have anything to do with Musa’s secrets? Or with Amina’s letter postponing her visits to Palestine because she foresaw troubles in the near future? She remembered Otto’s words, “My friends advised me to move. It is not safe for us to continue to live in Jaffa.” Seeing her astonished eyes, he said, “Don’t you read the newspapers? Don’t you know what’s happening? We are sitting on a bomb ready to explode.”

  Musa never brought newspapers home. Lately when she went shopping with Samira, Shifra became aware that Samira was watching her intensely when she stopped at a newspaper stand, “Don’t throw Musa’s money away; he knows better what you should read.”

  How long would she continue to live in a vacuum? Shifra was relieved when Musa told her that he planned to go to Jerusalem. “I am going on behalf of the bank. I’ll be gone for a few days. It will be a chance to meet with cousin Abdullah. I hope I’ll be able to see Na’ima, too.”

  He took her in his arms, “I’ll not be gone for long. Don’t worry.” Seeing her clouded eyes he continued, “What would you like me to bring you? Silk for a blouse, or ribbons to braid in your beautiful hair?” When Musa smiled his frowns disappeared.

  And now she was waiting for his departure, her head full of plans to spend the time he’d be away from home. It wouldn’t be easy to find her way in Tel-Aviv. She’d been there only once, for a bar-mitzvah in her father’s family. She remembered her father, looking at the streets bursting with groups of people who were laughing or seated around tables outside Beit Kafes, speaking loudly, watching passers-by. His words were full of contempt, “A city of epicorsim, nonbelievers, no fear or respect for the Almighty.” And to her mother, “Tell the girls to keep their heads down. No need for them to watch this Sodom and Gomorrah debacle.”

  She knew the Schroders’ new address, 31 Yehuda Halevi. She repeated it to herself every day. From fear that Samira might find it, she had torn the little paper into pieces. She would go alone. Maybe she could convince Samira to take Selim to the beach. The child had begged for a long time to go back to see the “big water.” She would feign a headache. It would not be a complete lie. Lately, the restlessness tightening her heart made her temples throb, while her entire body felt weak.

  Samira only smiled at her complaints, “Your sickness will soon have eyes. Inshallah, it will pass. But you certainly must rest.”

  Samira was happy to take Selim to the beach. “Just be careful,” Shifra called after her, “Don’t keep him in the sun too long; take his drinks and, please, don’t let him get too close to the water.”

  After they left, Shifra feverishly readied herself for adventure. She put the new blouse, skirt and shoes into the bag she used when she went to the souk. She did not leave before watching Fatima’s windows to make sure she wasn’t being spied on. Dressed in her jelebia and hijab, Shifra knew that she wouldn’t attract attention.

  She would enter the St. Peter’s church halfway between Jaffa and Tel-Aviv, go to the rest room and change clothes—enter as Suha and exit as Shifra. That was her plan. Then with the money she had saved at the souk the last few weeks, for which Samira clicked her tongue in admiration, “I didn’t know you were such an expert shopper,” she would pay the bus fare. Here her plan ended. She did not know if she would find the street in Tel-Aviv or what she would do after she found it.

  Shifra was lucky. Aside from two women kneeling in front of the altar, the church was empty. Shifra changed her clothes in a hurry, the smell of the burning candles giving her a headache. Outside she breathed with relief. For the first time she was not wearing stockings, as she did as a religious Jewish girl, nor the long jelebia, as an Arab woman. She felt embarrassed thinking that people could watch her naked legs, so she walked along the seashore.

  Walking did not scare her. On Shabbat, her family would walk for hours from their Geula neighborhood to visit their uncle in Mea Shearim and back.

  “Hey, ialda, hop up, we’ll give you a lift.” The Hebrew words startled her. The voice belonged to the driver of a small truck filled with watermelons, which stopped near her. Among the watermelons she saw two girls and a boy, about her age, smiling at her. They were dressed in short pants, and Shifra could see the tan of their naked arms and legs. Shifra hesitated.

  “I don’t have an entire day to wait for you to make up your mind,” the driver said, “are you coming, yes, or no?”

  The girls extended their arms to pull her up. “We are delivering the melons to souk Hacarmel,” one of them said, while the other made a place for Shifra on the narrow bench.” My name is Aviva, this is Ayelet,” she pointed to the second girl, “and Amnon here is the leitzan, the comedian of our moshav Yarkona.”

  “I am Shifra,” Shifra found her tongue. She felt overwhelmed by the way her adventure was turning out. “I must’ve been dreaming. I guess I lost my way.”

  “Aren’t you lucky?” said the girl called Ayelet. “Avram, our driver, knows Tel-Aviv like the back of his palm. Where are you going?”

  “To Rehov Yehuda Halevi,” Shifra answered.

  “That’s really close,” Avram, following their conversation, remarked. For Shifra’s benefit he continued to call the names of the streets he drove on, while Shifra tried to memorize the way, as well as note the turns he took.

  “What number?” Avram asked.

  “Bevakasha, please leave me at the beginning of the street, I don’t remember the number, but I know what the house looks like,” Shifra lied. She hopped down from the truck, saying “Toda raba, Avram, many thanks to all of you, lehitraot, goodbye.”

  The boy called Yehuda said, “Hey, Shifrale, wait, catch this,” and he threw a small watermelon into her arms, “Enjoy it!”

  Shifra walked on the even-numbered side of the street, thinking how friendly and helpful the young farmers had been. She found a passage, across the street, from where she thought she could watch unobserved the house at No. 31. On the third-floor balcony a beautiful dark-haired woman with dangling earrings was hanging wet clothes on wires stretched in three rows outside the balcony. Who was she? Wasn’t that the Schroder’s apartment? Was she their helper?

  “Mazal,” called a plump woman walking out the front of the house. “Mazal,” she repeated, looking up, �
��are you done? It’s time we take G’veret Schroder to the park.” The woman rolled her R’s with a strong German accent. Behind the woman, Shifra saw Gretchen Shroder’s frail silhouette. When both women accompanying her were on the street, Gretchen Schroder raised her hand to protect her eyes from the sun. Suddenly Gretchen screamed, “Ruthie,” pointing her finger at Shifra. “This is Ruthie, my sweet child,” She opened her arms, “Ruthie, Commen sie, bitte, come,please.”

  The heavy set woman took Gretchen’s arm, whispering in her ear, while Shifra squeezed behind a group of passers-by. The woman named Mazal was faster. Like an arrow, she crossed the street and tugged at Shifra’s sleeve. “Who are you?” she asked. When Shifra didn’t answer she repeated with impatience, “Who are you? Answer me.”

  At that moment the strident sound of an ambulance stopped all movement. Everybody, including Mazal, watched it. A British policeman appeared from nowhere and whistled for people to disperse. Feeling Mazal’s grip on her arm lessen, Shifra quickly disengaged herself and disappeared in the crowds.

  “It was too soon,” she tried to calm the rapid beats of her heart while hurrying her steps. “That wasn’t in my plan. I wanted only to see where they lived, maybe to hear the violin.”

  Shifra was still running long after she knew she was out of danger.

  Now that they lived in Tel-Aviv and Lotte and Mazal were watching over Gretchen, Otto mostly walked home after the orchestra rehearsals. He liked to unwind after the intense work. It was October, his favorite month, which reminded him of Berlin in October when, holding Gretchen’s arm, they would walk on Unter den Linden, under the trees’ fine rain of flowers. One could not get much shade under Tel-Aviv’s palm trees, but it was a short walk from the orchestra’s residence on Rehov Balfour to his apartment.

  Otto thought of the concert schedule for the month, Joseph Rosenstock conducting his friend from Berlin days, Szimon Goldberg, in the Mendelssohn violin concerto in Tel-Aviv and the Beethoven concerto in Jerusalem. “Beethoven for the connoisseurs, the yekim in Jerusalem,” laughed one cellist, a Sabra.