Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth

by Edeet Ravel

  we tapped on the glass window between the back of the truck and the

  Russians

  but was there a window?

  or was it only a metal wall?

  it must have been a window

  how else would I remember the Russians

  laughing and slapping each other’s shoulders

  I was half-asleep when the truck stopped suddenly

  ten kilometres from the city

  we all froze in panic

  maybe it was all an illusion

  maybe they were back

  maybe some parts of Europe were still under their control

  anything sudden did that to us

  the mind gets trained in one direction

  learns to protect itself

  but there was no one there

  only a little girl sitting by the side of the road

  dressed in strange clothes that didn’t fit her

  the Russians had stopped for her

  but no one moved

  the Russians were waiting for one of us to climb down and get her

  but no one had the strength for it

  I was afraid the truck would move on

  the girl would be left behind

  she was half-dead like the rest of us

  any minute she’d stop clinging on

  and her death would be our fault

  worse than our fault

  when we weren’t selected

  because we didn’t choose

  only hoped

  some of us hoped

  but here we had a choice

  it was very hard

  I staggered up

  undid the half-door at the back

  someone helped me with that

  I got out of the truck and took the girl’s hand and led her up inside

  the girl sat on the floor

  she thought she had no choice

  she didn’t know the war was over

  I said the war is over

  she didn’t seem to understand me

  it was impossible to tell what language she knew

  if any

  she had a devious face

  like a small demon

  she’d lost her mind

  she clutched my shirt with her small dirty hand

  the shirt the Red Cross gave me

  I guessed she was between seven and fourteen

  hard to know with everyone shrinking

  and looking so old

  one British soldier thought I was an old woman

  he said to someone bring the old lady over here

  the way the girl clutched me was closer to seven

  her eyes were closer to fourteen

  but even two-year-olds had those sad old eyes

  in the ghetto

  and fourteen-year-olds clutched

  we all lost our ages

  the truck reached the city

  the Russians offered us cigarettes

  Prague was impossible

  nothing had changed

  nothing had changed

  it was all the same

  there were broken windows from the riots

  heaps of rubble

  but apart from that it was the same

  we were the nightmare

  intruding on the city

  the Russians let us off the truck

  we dispersed

  the girl wouldn’t let go of my shirt

  and anyhow there was nowhere for her to go

  the Russians were returning to the DP camp

  they could take her

  I couldn’t leave her with the Russians

  I’d have to take the girl with me to Katya’s

  everyone stared at us or looked away

  afraid

  the first few days we’d slept in a field

  wrapped in blankets from the Red Cross

  a tall man hovered above me

  repeating over and over I killed him, I killed him

  he dangled the rope he’d used to strangle an officer in front of me

  then he moved on to someone else

  dangled the rope in front of them

  we’d all lost our minds

  it was only a matter of degree

  I had ways to hold on to sanity

  I studied the human mind

  sadism

  torture

  starvation

  group behaviour under threat

  I pretended to myself that I was doing research

  undercover

  now I was encountering revenge

  the German officer he’d strangled was lying face down in a ditch

  no one cared

  we were tired

  it began to drizzle and we were taken in trucks to a train

  British soldiers gave us sardines

  sweet lemon juice

  the sun shone in through the open doors

  I tried to tell the soldiers that if we ate more than one sardine at a time

  and more than one tin in a day

  we would die

  I tried to warn people

  but two men and a woman ate too fast and died in great pain

  I slept on the train and then I slept five or six days at the American

  post

  I heard that a Russian truck was leaving for Prague

  and I managed to find it

  now I had to find Katya’s house

  I was lucky

  someone took pity on us

  and gave us a ride

  the girl was still clinging to my shirt

  the driver talked about the riots

  I wanted a bath

  he let us off at Katya’s house

  I looked up and saw the red curtains of her apartment

  Katya’s apartment

  the curtains were a good sign

  the driver told us that two thousand people were killed in the uprising

  Katya and her parents could have been among them

  I wanted a bath

  and eggs

  and to be rid of the girl

  my own baby died on January 14, 1942

  he was shot on the way to the ghetto, in my husband’s arms

  along with my husband

  it was worse for other parents

  that realization came to me in the months that followed

  the realization that given the choices, it was worse for those whose

  children were still alive

  I rang the bell

  I could hardly stand on my feet

  a maid I didn’t know opened the door a crack

  she kept the chain on

  she called out: refugees

  an old man and a girl

  old man

  I laughed at that

  my first laugh in the new world

  Katya came to the door

  she undid the chain

  she said we don’t have much

  I’ll see what I can find

  I said it’s Vera

  I’m not old and not a man

  I’m Vera

  this is a girl we picked up

  I don’t know anything about her

  Katya let us in

  we sat in her living room

  the maid prepared tea

  Katya said what can I give you

  we have four eggs

  I made bread this morning

  I said I’d like poached eggs on buttered toast

  and hot milk with cocoa

  the girl should have a soft-boiled egg and as much milk as you can

  spare

  nothing that’s hard to digest

  Katya hurried to the kitchen to tell the maid

  I was laughing

  Katya was crying

  I said let’s have some music

  Katya put on the radio and a classical piece came on

  Fauré I think

  the little girl let go of my shirt

  walked to the middle of the room

  began dancing ballet
<
br />   precise ballet movements

  she kept it up for half a minute or a minute

  then she fell to the floor

  and began shrieking

  piercing

  demonic shrieks

  she peed on the carpet

  and Katya’s father walked in

  alarmed

  there was an old man on the sofa

  a girl shrieking in a puddle of urine on the floor

  when the girl saw the man she stopped shrieking

  terrified

  ran back to me

  clutched my shirt again

  Katya said it’s Vera

  her father said I know who it is

  he sat down next to me and kissed my hands

  Jan? he said

  I shook my head

  Jan and the baby were shot on Jan 14, 1942

  just as well I said

  considering

  considering what was coming

  I said I want to go to Canada

  can you arrange that?

  can you get me a visa?

  I want to study there

  even if I have to start over

  I want to start over anyhow

  the eggs were ready

  the girl clutched my shirt in one hand and held her spoon with the other

  we tried various languages

  with the help of dictionaries

  I was back in a world that had dictionaries

  damask

  paintings on the wall of children on a sled

  finally we had some luck with Italian

  the girl understood Italian

  I asked for a bath

  Katya said the water was only tepid but she’d add hot water from the

  kettle

  I undressed

  the girl didn’t let go of my shirt

  she sat on the floor holding the shirt

  I got into the water and lay down

  the water turned dark brown

  we changed the water four times

  Katya vomited

  she was too thin to be pregnant

  it was seeing me naked that made her vomit

  the girl refused to be bathed

  Katya wiped her with wet towels

  Katya was afraid of her

  but to me she was ordinary

  her demonic shriek in the living room had been ordinary

  it was this life that was out of the ordinary

  I wanted to sleep

  Katya gave me her bed

  the girl slept with me

  we slept for days on end

  slept and ate

  our cells regenerating

  with remarkable speed

  the human body was remarkable

  the human mind was even more remarkable

  how had I not gone mad?

  how?

  I didn’t know

  even my memory had survived intact

  another mystery

  Katya asked a friend who spoke Italian to come visit

  he tried to find out more about the girl

  where she came from

  she didn’t know

  Katya’s father managed to get me a visa

  he pulled the usual strings

  he wrote to McGill University

  they were willing to take me

  I’d have to start over

  my period returned

  my tissues repaired themselves

  my hair began growing back

  the maid took a liking to the girl

  went out walking with her

  the girl had a wild look in her eyes still

  but she was well-behaved

  she was learning Czech

  if you studied the mind several lifetimes you still would not understand

  more than a fraction

  there was endless oddity about us

  at night I returned to another world

  nightmares you’d call them

  Gerald

  but they were memories

  replaying themselves in my mind

  during the day I could control my thoughts

  I controlled them

  but at night

  at night they returned

  but if you hold me tonight

  maybe I’ll sleep better

  with you I feel safe

  is that what you mean when you say you love me

  I feel safe with you

  Gerald

  for me that’s enough

  for me that’s enough

  do you understand?

  can you understand?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  David Davidar, my publisher, inspired me with his humanity, spirit of generosity, and unwavering integrity. David will never know how much I owe him for his faith in my work; creativity cannot thrive without the sustenance of such faith.

  It was a joy to work with my editor, Nicole Winstanley. Nicole’s unfailing good humour, patience, energy, and insightful comments were a gift. The entire Penguin team has been incomparable. A special thanks to copy editor Heather Sangster for astute and thorough scavenging.

  Joan Deitch, who lives in London, is a brilliant, devoted editor as well as fab friend and confidante, sweet and funny and unstinting with her time and expertise. Her encouragement was invaluable; she held my hand through all the panicky middle-of-the-night worries and entertained me with her lovely letters.

  Penn Kemp came up with many imaginative, sensitive, and poetic suggestions. I am very grateful to Derek Fairbridge for his careful reading and numerous helpful comments. I am obliged to John Detre for making time to answer questions about the 1960s and for generous professional assistance. It was, as usual, fun plying Ken Sparling with musical questions; apart from providing scintillating answers, Ken always had a wise and intriguing word for me.

  I was deeply moved by the heartfelt responses to the manuscript of Tom Deitch, Cesar Garza, and Ruz Gulko.

  Marsha Ablowitz, who was so kind to me when I was five years old, reappeared in my life and was as kind as ever. Her contribution is deeply appreciated.

  For unending support and quota-free listening as I made my way through all the stages of producing this book, and for enthusiasm about my writing these past forty years, I thank, inadequately, Shirley Rand Simha.

  For expert help with many hurdles, I am grateful to Chris Heap.

  Joan Barfoot understands everything. I can’t thank her enough for her thoughtfulness and magnificent books.

  Many thanks to Mindy Abramowitz for the open line.

  I am fortunate to have fellow-artists Richard Cooper and Margaret Wolfson on my side. I am most grateful to Andrea Levy for providing a loving second home for Larissa, and much else.

  For technical help my thanks to Lisa diLanzo Brombal, Ze’ev Gedalof, Hélène Hampartzoumian, Howard Johnson, Peter F. McNally, Charles Stevens of Cottage Blooms, West Falls, and the staff at the wonderful Guelph Library, whom I kept busy and who were so very accommodating. I was extremely lucky to find the superb Tel Aviv photographer Shlomi Bernthal and gifted Israeli actor Shir Shomron for the cover photo, which was beautifully adapted by the inspired Penguin design team.

  I would not have survived the demands of a sixty-hour workweek without the unrivalled sports therapist Johanna Thackwray.

  I am humbled by the many heroic death-camp survivors in my life and family. In the end, there are no words with which to tell their story and no way to understand what they experienced. This silence hovers at the edges of the novel and of all our lives. We give it meaning by living with love and striving for justice.

  This book is dedicated to my daughter Larissa, whose radiance transforms my life every minute of every day.

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth is the story of Maya Levitsky, a wise, witty, and unconventional art history teacher and daughter of a Holocaust survivor. When a brush with the past brings her to reflect on the singular events that have shaped her life, Maya begins, thr
ough the lens of her Jewish background, her sexuality, and her beloved art, to unravel the strands in her personal history that have both bound and anchored her. She asks questions that we have all struggled with at some point: How much do the living owe the dead, and how useful is it to look back? Where does the line between oneself and one’s family begin and end? Does evasion save or defeat us? How do we manage the shackles of guilt?

  Set in Montreal, the book brings to life many familiar facets of the immigrant experience of the 1960s: the dry cleaners where Maya’s mother, lost inside a tangle of love and trauma, works to support her daughter; the hippie summer camp that lures Maya away from her mother; the Hebrew school that offers refuge from the perceived dangers of the outside world. Through her attachment to Rosie, Maya finds that, much as she wants to proceed on her own terms, she cannot escape the ghostly presence of the Holocaust and its incomprehensible horrors. When disaster makes its way into the lives of this second generation, Maya and her closest friends find themselves unable to rescue an innocence they never really possessed.

  In this touching, searching, and unusually revealing story, Canadian novelist Edeet Ravel continues a project begun with her acclaimed Tel Aviv trilogy about the effects of war and trauma on ordinary people. Looking back from the vantage point of the present, Ravel’s wry but sympathetic narrator sheds light on the way that events—past and present, tragic and comic, casual and intimate—shape our lives and make us who we are. And while the book encompasses many issues and themes, from cultural transformations to the weight of both personal and common history, it is more than anything a tribute to the triumph of friendship and love in the face of tragedy. ■

  AN INTERVIEW WITH EDEET RAVEL

  Q: You’ve chosen to take on one of the biggest crises in history, but there is evidence in the book to suggest that all people’s lives are extraordinary, whether touched by tragedy or not. At one point Maya says, “What I assumed other people had—a simple life—no one has.” How much is that your own philosophy?

  I agree with Maya that no one has a simple or “ordinary” life—there is no such thing. When I give talks, someone in the audience inevitably asks, Why do you writers always write about such strange people? Actually, the strangeness of that question intrigues me, and I’d like to write about a character who asks it…. The answer is that it’s only a matter of how deeply and closely you want to look. It takes courage, or maybe foolhardiness, to examine the half-hidden peculiarities and uncertainties of life. I don’t think we understand anything in an absolute or final way, but when it comes to the Holocaust, we are really in the dark. Survivors can’t communicate their experience and we can’t imagine it. The idea of a non-survivor trying to describe that experience in a work of fiction dismays me, with the exception of books for children or second-generation memoirs like Maus, which is brilliant. ■