by Judy Nunn
‘How can I become your wife, Moshe, if I do not love you?’
An empty question, he’d thought – he could see that she already knew there was only one answer.
‘You need me.’ To Moshe Toledano, love and need were perfectly equated: he wanted her, she needed him, and a love of some form would develop over time.
‘No,’ she’d said, ‘I will not become your wife, and I will not bear your children. But, if you wish, I will live with you on your orchard.’ Then she’d shocked him with her own unequivocal offer. ‘I will perform all the duties of a wife. I will cook for you, I will work by your side and I will share your bed.’ She would owe him that duty, she’d thought. And why not? She’d been a whore to Klaus Henkel and Eli Mankowski: her body was already a commodity, and it was a cheap price to pay for a peaceful existence. ‘If it is companionship you wish, Moshe, in all its forms, I am willing to provide it.’
And Moshe’s arrogance had allowed him to accept. A woman like Ruth Lachmann, he’d thought, would not be content to live in sin for long. She would marry him eventually.
They were not far from her uncle’s house in Beit Yisrael, and Moshe, having accepted her apology, tried to put her at her ease.
‘A lot has changed in six years, Ruth,’ he said.
‘Yes, I can see that,’ she replied, deliberately misunderstanding him, looking out at the new buildings.
‘I mean people,’ he said. ‘People like David.’ He made no mention of Eli Mankowski – in the six years they’d lived together they’d never once spoken the man’s name – although he knew it was Eli she was thinking of. ‘People do change,’ he said. In any event, he wasn’t referring to Eli. He doubted whether Mankowski would ever change – from what he’d heard the man was an insane fanatic. But he’d noted her scathing tone when she’d mentioned her cousin and he felt obliged to assure her there was nothing to fear. ‘David was young,’ he said, ‘and easily influenced at the time.’
At the time, she realised, meant Deir Yassin. It was a subject which never came under discussion, and although she knew he meant well, she wished he would stop.
‘He’s changed, Ruth, you’ll see. David has grown out of his radical phase.’
Grown out of killing, do you mean?
‘He’s been working with his father for three years now, Walter was so glad when he came back to the fold.’ Moshe had often seen David Stein during his trips into town, and although he still didn’t particularly like the man, he’d maintained the semblance of a friendship for the sake of his old friend, Walter. Out of deference to Ruth, however, he’d never mentioned the fact – David was another subject never discussed.
‘David will be taking over the family business now that Walter has gone.’
Good for David.
He wished she’d say something. ‘You’ve changed too, Ruth,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You’re a different person, you’ve adapted to a different life.’
Adapted? Oh no. Oh no, I haven’t.
‘I know, Moshe,’ she agreed, anything to stop him talking. ‘I know I have, and it’s thanks to you.’
He smiled, glad to be appreciated, and took a left turn into the street which led to her uncle’s house.
Adapted, she thought. No, she’d never adapted. If only she could. That was her trouble, she’d never learned to adapt. Ira had tried to teach her, but it had been a skill she had never mastered.
In her loneliness over the past years, as she’d tried to reconcile herself to a life with a man she didn’t love, Ira Schoneberger had become Ruth’s constant companion. She heard his voice and pictured him in her mind as she’d desperately tried to heed his advice. She even had conversations out loud with him when she was on her own. Perhaps she was going mad, she’d thought, but she’d found comfort in Ira’s words.
‘I intend to become a chameleon,’ he had told her, ‘when I am free.’ Ira had always said ‘when’ and not ‘if’. ‘I shall change my colour to suit my environment, I shall become whatever people wish me to be. If I am in a country intolerant towards Jews, I shall change my name and live accordingly. And if I go to America, which I believe is very sympathetic to the Jewish plight, then I shall tell my story to anyone who wishes to hear it. Who knows what lies ahead for us all? To survive successfully, Ruth, one must adapt.’
She had tried. She’d tried her hardest on a daily basis, year after year. But, unlike Ira, Ruth had been unable to adapt, and the nothingness of her life with Moshe Toledano had become a prison.
‘Ruth!’
As they pulled up outside the apartment, Rebekah ran out to greet them. She’d been watching for their arrival through the front downstairs window.
Ruth climbed from the car and embraced her young cousin, grateful for Rebekah’s uninhibited display of affection. The two had maintained contact over the years by letter, but she’d been unsure of the reception she might receive in person. There was no awkwardness, however; Rebekah’s welcome was warm and genuine, and there was a hint of tears as she clung to Ruth.
‘Just look at you.’ It was Ruth who finally broke the moment, holding the girl at arm’s length and looking her up and down admiringly. ‘Every inch the young sophisticate.’ Rebekah had certainly inherited the dramatic good looks of her mother, Ruth thought: always a pretty child, she was now a striking young woman. ‘So tell me,’ she asked briskly, aware that the girl was trying to control the threat of tears, ‘how did your exams go?’
‘I’m fairly confident.’ Rebekah smiled, thankful for the small talk.
‘You’re being modest. Moshe tells me you’re bound to top the course again this year.’ Twenty-one-year-old Rebekah had just completed the second year of her medical degree at Mount Scopus Hebrew University.
Her emotions now in check, Rebekah was able to speak her mind. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Ruth,’ she said, ‘it would so please him to know that you’d come.’
The grief for her father’s death was etched in her face, and Ruth was moved.
‘I’m glad I’m here too,’ she said sincerely, casting a look in Moshe’s direction, both apologetic and thankful.
Arm in arm, the women walked up the path to the front door, chatting as freely as they always had, and Moshe followed behind them, pleased by their reunion and his own vindication.
The moment Ruth stepped into the hall and was confronted by her aunt, however, the awkwardness she’d been expecting was instantly readable. It was clear that, even on the occasion of her husband’s funeral, Sarah Stein wished to communicate her disapproval.
Sarah surveyed the group coldly. She was cross with her daughter – Rebekah’s effusiveness was unfitting behaviour for one in mourning. Furthermore, it was offensive she should so warmly welcome her cousin, a woman who had besmirched the family name by living in sin with a good man who wished to marry her.
She ignored her daughter and greeted Moshe only briefly. Then, offering no words of welcome to her niece, she waited for Ruth to make the first move.
‘Shalom, Aunt Sarah.’ Ruth crossed to her aunt and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘It is a sad day,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Sarah replied stiffly, accepting the show of respect with the dignity it warranted. ‘A sad day indeed.’
‘I loved him. Very much.’
‘Yes. I know you did.’ Recognising her niece’s sincerity, Sarah relented just a little. She couldn’t understand the girl, and she never would, but Walter had. They’d argued about it, she remembered.
‘She’s disgracing the family name,’ she’d said.
‘How is she disgracing it?’ he’d asked. ‘She’s not flaunting her relationship – she’s gone into hiding.’
‘That’s not the point …’
‘It’s exactly the point,’ he’d insisted. ‘She’s been tortured for years by the death of her husband and child, perhaps Moshe and his orchard can provide some sort of peace.’
‘Then she should marry him.’
‘There are some who can’t marry without love, Sa
rah.’ He’d said it with no deliberate intention to wound, but she’d recognised it as a personal remark, even a criticism, and it had hurt just a little.
Over the years, Ruth’s incomprehensible decision not to marry had continued to meet with Sarah’s disapproval, but she had never brought up the subject again.
Now, thinking of her husband and confronted by her niece, Sarah felt herself mellow. As Walter would have wished, she had no doubt.
‘He loved you very much too, Ruth,’ she said. She offered no embrace, no display of affection – she was too wearied by grief – but she could tell by the look on Ruth’s face that the words were enough, and for the moment she was glad.
‘Now come into the kitchen,’ she said, leading the way. ‘David is making us a pot of tea before we leave.’
Ruth braced herself.
He was setting out the cups and saucers on the large kitchen table as they entered, and Ruth’s initial impression was that he seemed bigger.
‘Shalom, Moshe,’ he said looking up from the tea things. Then to her, ‘Shalom, Ruth, it’s been a long time.’
‘Shalom, David.’
He was bigger, she realised. Not yet fat, but fleshy, the finely chiselled cheekbones of his youth were gone, and the athletic frame was now that of a man approaching middle age. But David was not even thirty, she thought, relieved somehow that he looked like a stranger.
‘I’m sorry about your father,’ she said dutifully.
‘Yes, it came as a shock to us all. He was only sixty-three.’
David’s reply was equally dutiful, for the sake of his mother, but he was glad to see Ruth, and abruptly he changed the subject – he was sick of being maudlin.
‘You’re looking good,’ he said, and as he smiled Ruth was jolted into the past. His smile was as confident, as winning and as boyish as it had always been, and it was flirtatiously intimate, like a lover hinting at a shared secret. It unnerved her.
‘You’re looking well yourself, David,’ she said, aware that she sounded unnaturally prim.
‘Yes,’ he replied, patting his waistline, ‘a little too well. The good life has agreed with me.’
Sarah was finding the conversation too frivolous for her liking. ‘Rebekah, will you pour the tea,’ she asked, more an order than a request.
‘No, no,’ David halted his sister as she crossed to the teapot which sat on the bench by the sink, ‘it’s still drawing, Mother, give it a few more minutes. I’ll just pop outside for a cigar, be back when it’s ready. Ruth, will you join me? There’s so much to catch up on, isn’t there?’ And before his mother could reply or Ruth could demur, he’d taken her by the arm and led her out onto the patio, Sarah glaring her annoyance.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Ruth said when he’d closed the door.
‘I don’t really, it’s more to impress than anything.’ His grin was cheeky as he took a Corona from the solid silver case which he kept in his breast pocket and lit it with his solid silver lighter. Then he struck a pompous pose and puffed ostentatiously, the quintessential businessman, but a boy showing off, and again an intimacy he was sharing with her. She didn’t react.
‘I just wanted a chance to talk with you alone,’ he said, dropping the pose.
Why? she wondered, but she made no enquiry.
‘It’s good to see you, Ruth. Are you happy?’
‘No.’ She didn’t want to look at him. He no longer appeared a stranger. The eyes in the fleshy handsomeness of his face were all too familiar and they brought back ugly memories. She gazed out at the street instead.
He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’ He was surprised; he’d presumed that she was happy. Moshe hadn’t led him to believe otherwise, but then Moshe was a man of few words. At least he was with him. David had the impression that Moshe didn’t very much like him – not that it mattered: he didn’t much like Moshe. He’d suspected at one stage that the man was jealous of his relationship with Ruth; Moshe had been so overprotective of her.
‘I’m her cousin, for God’s sake,’ he’d said when Moshe had repeatedly prevented him making contact with her. ‘I’m no threat!’
‘Yes, you are,’ Moshe had finally told him. ‘She doesn’t wish to see you or to hear from you – she wants no reminder of her time with Lehi.’
He’d been taken aback. No-one outside the group, including his parents, knew of his or Ruth’s association with Lehi. ‘How much did she tell you?’ he’d asked.
‘Everything.’
David looked at her now, gazing out at the street, assiduously avoiding his eyes. ‘So why are you not happy, Ruth?’ he asked.
‘What is it you want of me, David?’ She still refused to look at him. ‘Why did you wish to speak to me alone?’
It was futile, he realised, to continue with the niceties.
‘Has he made contact with you?’ he asked.
She pretended ignorance. ‘Who?’ she replied, fixing her eyes on the unattractive apartment block opposite.
‘Eli, of course.’
‘I haven’t seen him since that day.’
‘Well, I didn’t expect you’d seen him.’ There was a touch of irritation in his tone. ‘No-one has. But has he been in touch? Do you know where he is?’
‘No.’ At last she looked at him, trying not to let her relief show. ‘So he’s not here? He won’t be at the funeral?’
‘Good God no, he dumped me along with everyone else.’ The irritation was replaced by bitterness. ‘I haven’t seen or heard from him in six years. The rumour is he left Palestine in ’48. I thought at least he might have contacted you, of all people.’
Why me ‘of all people’? she wondered, surely David didn’t know of her sexual relationship with Eli Mankowski? No-one knew. Eli himself would certainly never have spoken of it.
‘There is no reason why Eli should contact me,’ she said. He was looking at her shrewdly, trying to read her reaction, hoping she’d give something away. He didn’t know the truth, she realised, he was just guessing. She met his eyes directly. ‘I meant less than nothing to Eli. There would be no reason for him to remain in contact. Unlike you, David, I was not a good fighter.’
The condemnation in her voice failed to register, but, satisfied with her answer, he stopped studying her and puffed on his cigar, flicking the ash over the railing.
‘They still talk about him, you know. Some say he fled Palestine fearing there’d be reprisals over the attack …’
He used the term ‘attack’, she noted, not ‘massacre’.
‘… although that seems a little out of character, don’t you think? But whatever the reason, he’s deserted us. Perhaps he was never as committed as he pretended to be, perhaps it was all just a game to him.’ David snorted contemptuously. ‘He’s probably hired himself out as a mercenary to whichever cause has offered the highest bid, “Eli Mankowski, the great freedom fighter!”’ He painted a sign in the air, relishing his derision of the hero who had abandoned him. ‘I don’t think he cares who he’s fighting or what he’s fighting for. Eli just needs to be part of a war …’
‘I’m going inside,’ Ruth said, ‘the tea will be ready now.’
It had been a fine funeral, Sarah thought. The service had been conducted with all the dignity befitting a man of Walter Stein’s standing and she’d been most gratified by the numbers in attendance. She thanked Rabbi Yeshen as they stood on the steps of the chevra kadisha, and then he left her to accept the condolences of those queuing to pay their respects before the family and friends departed for the cemetery.
As the mourners respectfully filed past Sarah and her children, Ruth stood to one side with Moshe. She knew very few of those in attendance and, unaccustomed to social gatherings, was glad to be excluded. Then she saw a couple who seemed familiar. She hadn’t noticed them in the crowded funeral parlour, just as they had not noticed her.
‘We wish you long life,’ they both said to Sarah.
Their backs were to Rut
h and she couldn’t see their faces, but she knew them just the same, and she recognised the woman’s voice.
‘We arrived only last week,’ the woman was saying, and she was speaking Yiddish, not Hebrew. ‘We’ve been in Switzerland these past years. And yesterday, when we heard the news of Walter’s passing, we felt we must come and pay our respects. He was such a fine man.’
‘Thank you.’ Sarah accepted the tribute graciously. It was good of the Meisells to go to such trouble so soon after their arrival, she thought, and particularly as she’d not seen them in fifteen years. Not since she and Walter had left Berlin shortly before the outbreak of war. ‘It’s so kind of you to come.’
So the Meisells had survived, Ruth thought, and she felt a surge of pleasure at the sight of her friends from Viktoria-Luise-Platz. Memories of the hardships they’d endured together returned: the furtive meetings she’d had with Sharon, the dangerous excursions they’d made to forage for food, always hiding the Star of David on their coats. She remembered the secret English lessons she’d conducted with their daughter and she looked around the crowd, but Naomi wasn’t there. She hoped that Naomi, too, had survived.
She waited until the Meisells had finished paying their respects and, as they walked down the steps towards the street, she excused herself from Moshe and followed them.
‘Sharon, Efraim,’ she said, ‘it’s so wonderful to see you.’
She’d never witnessed such amazement. Jaws agape, they stared at her, then at each other, then back to her. It was almost comical, she thought.
‘Ruth? Ruth Lachmann?’ They had recognised her immediately, but Efraim’s statement came out more a question – he was incredulous.
‘Yes, that’s me.’ The sound of the name she’d denied herself all these years was not painful, not from Efraim. From Efraim, it gave her pleasure.
‘Ruth!’ Sharon hugged her fiercely, then stepped back to survey her again, as if she still couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘We thought you were dead.’
‘Well, that’s to be expected,’ Ruth said. ‘The Lachmanns and the Meisells, we were the last ones left, weren’t we?’ And as she said it, she remembered the clatter of the Nazis’ boots on the stairs, the fist on the door, Samuel holding her close in the darkened kitchen. ‘I thought that, in all likelihood, you were dead too, that’s why it’s so wonderful to see you …’