The Fugu Plan

by Marvin Tokayer

  "No," Moishe shook his head, clenching his teeth to hold back the sobs. "We have no family here."

  "There are those who believe all Jews are a family," the rebbe murmured, though more to himself than to the boy. "At any rate we should do something about this. Come, we will go to Intourist and see what is the next step. Don't give up quite yet. You are not alone, you know. The lists often are separating families. They make no sense. Come now, let us see if we can make them make sense."

  Moishe finally raised his head to look at the rebbe. He can speak to all of us, he thought. But who is he that he thinks he can change the mind of the Russian government? Yet the old man looked so completely calm, so confident, so unworried that Moishe began to feel just the slightest glimmer of hope.

  The rebbe was relieved to see signs of the return of the boy's spirit. "Come," he said, suddenly turning in the direction of Intourist and beginning to walk very rapidly, not looking back. Moishe had no choice but to hurry after him. Maybe, im yirzeh. . . .

  The moment one "insuperable" hurdle was cleared the refugees found another thrown up in their way. Yes, the government had given them permission to leave. But Intourist now demanded that payment for their trip across Russia to Japan be made in American dollars: two hundred apiece. Where was such a sum to come from? Even the pocketfuls of zlotys that some refugees had fled from Poland with were worthless currency now. The relief agencies organizations that channeled the donations from the free world into food, shelter and clothing for the fifteen thousand Jewish refugees in Lithuania - were already outspending their incomes. There was no work to be had, and even if there had been, certainly there would not have been enough time to earn two hundred dollars. Nor were banks permitted to change local currency into American dollars. The exit permits had very definite limits - if you were still in the country after they had expired, you were subject to immediate deportations to Siberia.

  In the days that followed the posting of the lists, a flood of cables went out from Vilna to bias, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, to its European counterpart H1CEM, to the Joint Distribution Committee and to hundreds of families, even second or third cousins whom no one had seen or spoken with in years: "Our hours are numbered. . . . Have pity on us. . . . Consider our lives. . . . Do not forget us now and even our grandchildren will never forget you. ..."

  But for some, there was simply no one to cable. For these, the only way to put together the sum was by selling every last thing of any value that they possessed on Vilna's black market. It meant they would be setting off on a journey half-way round the world, a journey that as yet did not even have a final destination, with absolutely nothing. And worse, as the refugees were warned by the red-haired manager of the Vilna Intourist bureau, "If you enter this office with American dollars, no one will ask you how or where you got them. But if you are caught with dollars on the streets, even just outside our door, you will be shot."

  "It is some sort of game they are playing with us!" the refugees agonized among themselves. "It is all a trap. We are merely finding money to pay for our own exile!"

  This new obstacle was not insurmountable, however. As a wave of cables had gone out, waves of dollars came back in - not in the perilous form of cash but as cables of certification from correspondent banks in New York, London, and elsewhere. They stated that the required amounts had been deposited on behalf of a particular individual or family. The Va'ad Hatzalah, the American organization dedicated to rescuing Jewry from the hell of Nazism, now made the Mir Yeshiva a top priority. Rabbi Kalmanowitz worked seven days a week - even on the Sabbath, which was forbidden in all but life-and-death situations - in pursuit of the fifty thousand dollars needed to move the whole yeshiva to Japan. That money, too, gradually came in.

  By mid-January, the first refugees had passed safely through the system and were ready to depart. They had not had a pleasant few weeks. Several Jews caught selling their belongings to try to get the two hundred dollars locally had been executed to serve as an example to other potential black-marketeers. However, at least the police had not stationed themselves just outside the Intourist door, to catch "offenders" in their last few steps. And the tickets, hotel vouchers and itineraries distributed to each departing refugee appeared to be valid enough. Ironically, one of the first to receive its passage money from the Joint Distribution Committee and be cleared through the NKVD was the family of the reluctant to leave Getzel Syrkin. Early one morning, the three Syrkins stood on the Vilna railway platform - Getzel, with Cheya clutching his arm so tightly he thought the imprint of her fingers would probably become a permanent scar, and their son, Dovid, standing alone, though scarcely two feet away, his knees securely pressed against a rope-tied knapsack. Dovid's brown eyes were as big and bright as marbles as he looked at the convolutions of black metal rising up like a wall in front of him. He had never been so close to a locomotive in his life and could not imagine what it was going to be like to ride on the train.

  He didn't have long to wonder. At the screech of a whistle, the train doors were opened and the passengers helped aboard. A second screech was followed by the clang of closing doors. Then there was a jerk forward. Dovid clutched tensely at the arms of his seat: but it wasn't the train that seemed to move - it was the platform. The very spot where, just a few minutes ago, he himself had been standing, was slipping away. The platform was followed by the entire station. Then, gradually picking up speed, the streets of the city began zipping off to some unknown destination. Dovid's hands hurt from holding on so tight. But why should he hang on if everything else was doing the moving? Trying to relax, he ordered himself to remember that he knew, after all, that it was the train that was moving. But his eyes - those most reliable sources of information - couldn't fit all that information in with the reality of the world passing by. Uncomfortable and a little frightened, the boy jerked his eyes away from the window to rest on the familiarity of his mother, sitting tense and straight, across from him. Of course, she was looking at him, - she was almost always looking at him. Seeing his excitement and feeling her own relief that they were now at least traveling away from the scene of a sixteen-month nightmare, Cheya Syrkin surprised her son with a tiny smile. For the first time in a long while, Dovid felt his stomach begin to unwind. Maybe the world was not, after all, completely without hope. He looked down at his feet which had grown uncomfortably big for his shoes. But he couldn't resist the lure of the window and the world moving past. Getzel shared neither his son's excitement nor his wife's sense of relief. Ever since that traumatic night in Alexandrov, he had felt himself poised on the brink of a bottomless pit. Only by a constant exercise of will could he prevent himself from toppling over the edge into nothingness. After sixteen months of this balancing act, he was exhausted - body, mind and spirit. And now what was confronting him? Now that he had managed to spirit himself and his family off to the temporary security of Vilna, now that he had forced himself to explore every conceivable avenue of legal and illegal flight from that insecure refuge and finally to seize this one final opportunity for escape . . . Even now, the nightmare was not over, but merely beginning a new, even more demanding phase. From now on there would be no more assistance from bias or the Joint Distribution Committee. In their place would be, at first, the alien, unsympathetic efficiency of Intourist and after that - if there would ever be an "after that," if they ever did get out of Russia he would be at the mercy of the Japanese. Getzel had very little expectation that they would ever get to America through Japan. He had allowed himself to be persuaded by the Amshenover rebbe, but he had no faith in the so-called "Jewish community" in Japan. If such a group even existed - a question that had been raised by many of the refugees in Vilna - its members wouldn't be his kind of Jews, he would never feel at ease with them. They would be like the "Jews" who people said lived in China who were really Chinese or the "Jews" in Africa who were really black men. Japan wouldn't be home. Even America wouldn't be home. And home was the one thing, the only thing, that Getzel wanted.
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  Leaning his head back against the upholstered seat, he stared out into the darkness. The train clattered noisily across the flat plains of Lithuania and would soon be in Russia proper. Deeper and deeper he was going, like Jonah being sucked deeper and deeper into the cavernous mouth of the leviathan.

  With a start, Getzel jerked his head forward, snapping himself back with difficulty to the sway of the train and started down the aisle for the toilet at the end of the car.

  Cheya watched him stumbling from handhold to handhold. If only she knew what to do. How to comfort him, how to help him? She too had been terrified that night sixteen months ago. Who could not be? But a person had to cope, Dovid had to be cared for. Meals had to be prepared, clothes had to be washed and mended, shabbos candles had to be lit, even if all these things had to be done in strange and difficult surroundings. But Getzel wasn't able to occupy himself either at his religious studies, or even at his trade. Cheya wondered if maybe that was a large part of his problem. If only they could get to America: if only, im yirzeh ha-Shem, Getzel could hold on till she could make him a new home in America.

  Twenty-four hours after it left Vilna, the train pulled into Moscow. The refugees crowded the platform, wide-eyed and overwhelmed by the immensity of the station. They were met and conducted, in a group, out into the street. For the Syrkins, as for the hundreds of other refugees from the small towns and shtetls of Poland who would pass the same way, Moscow might well have been on another planet. Vilna had been huge - Moscow was infinite. Vilna had tall buildings and busy streets - in Moscow you could only imagine the tops of some of the buildings. And traffic! If it had not been for the traffic signals, no one could ever have crossed a street!

  Once Intourist had been paid, it took care of virtually all travel arrangements. The refugees, dressed at best in old clothes, clumsily weighed down with bundles and small trunks, all they owned on earth, were led into the lobby of a fine hotel. There was clean, plush carpeting on the floor, and smooth round columns of polished marble stretched far overhead to support a carved and painted ceiling, gleaming bronze chandeliers brought daylight indoors. . . . The refugees merely stood with their mouths open, gaping in awe at the magnificence of it all, having to be reminded to follow the guide to the registration desk.

  Though trains came in daily from the Baltics to Moscow, the great Trans-Siberian train left only every few days. Thus the refugees had at least twenty-four hours to rest up in finer beds, in finer rooms, in warmer baths and cleaner surroundings than most of them had ever experienced before. And beyond the rooms themselves, there were the telephones and the elevators! Few of the Jews had ever been in an elevator before. They rode up and down, up and down, going nowhere, savoring the mechanical magic. The equally unfamiliar telephones were also in constant use as grown men behaved like children, calling each other from room to room. The hotel was a toy for those who had grown up with hardly any play time. The constant fear and anxiety of the past several months was temporarily wiped away by the excitement of it all.

  The one drawback to the arrangement was food. Intourist did not supply food, and having given their all to Intourist, few of the refugees had money left over to feed themselves. They could smell odors rising from the hotel kitchen or, on walks around Moscow, could watch through steamy restaurant windows as Russians ate their fill. Only a few, even of those refugees who were not concerned with the kosher status of their food, could afford restaurant prices, even for just a little black bread and cheese.

  The Syrkins had nearly forty-eight hours to wait for their train. The first day was completely taken up with the hotel - the shining tiles in the bathroom, the delicacy of the net curtains, the wonders of the flush toilet. By the morning of the second day, the excitement had palled. Cheya, taking Dovid with her, joined half a dozen other refugees venturing out into the city streets to shop for provisions for the long train trip ahead.

  Getzel remained alone in the room for a time, then went out himself to stretch his legs. He walked slowly along the broad avenue, block after block, not even noticing the crossing lights but letting the crowd around him indicate when to move and when to halt. It was cold but sunny, and when the throngs had thinned so much that Getzel had to begin looking out for himself, he found himself facing a broad open square where trolley cars turned around.

  Entranced at the sight, Getzel leaned against the stone wall of a building and simply watched. Haifa block down one of the deserted side streets that led into the open square, there was a brief commotion; two uniformed men were forcing a third to accompany them into a building. But Getzel paid no attention to that, preferring to lose himself entirely in the strange mechanical maneuverings before him. The brightly colored cars backed and turned, clanging and ringing as the conductors expertly pushed their levers this way and that, and fare boys shouted Russian words, that he couldn't understand. The trolleys made Getzel think of the tiny skatebugs that used to jerk across the surface of the ponds near Alexandrov, with their antennae sticking up like those things above the trolley cars. . . .

  Suddenly, a dark shadow fell over him and, a quarter of a second later, a Russian voice cracked like a whip on his ears. Getzel looked up and froze: the man was dressed in the uniform of a policeman, buttons gleaming, his pistol black and tight against his hip, his eyes filled with suspicion. Getzel pressed himself closer to the cold stone wall and said nothing. Even if his throat hadn't been frozen with fear, he wouldn't have known what to say in response to the incomprehensible Russian.

  Again, the voice, even louder this time. Obviously, the Russian was demanding some kind of an explanation but of what?

  Quivering, gasping for every breath, Getzel shrank further into himself. With an imploring look and a nod that was half a bow, he slid out from under the policeman's eyes and started back in the direction he had come from. An arm like a length of steel grabbed him. Half fainting in fright, Getzel could only stumble along as the policeman dragged him down a side street toward an iron door. As they passed into the building, Getzel saw the same insignia on the walls that he had seen in Vilna, at the NKVD headquarters. That office had been quiet. Here there was noise coming from behind the closed doors - talking, crying, angry voices. Suddenly, coming from the innermost bowels of the building, a long, horrible scream of pain cut through all the other sounds. The policeman seemed to rise up to the ceiling as Getzel fell in a faint at his feet.

  When he recovered, he nearly passed out again. He was alone in a tiny, one-bulb room, slumped as he had been thrown on a wooden chair. The door was closed tight, but only for a moment. As if they had been waiting for him to open his eyes, two men came in - the officer who had dragged him there, and another man in plain clothes.

  "Do you speak Polish?" the second man asked, in Polish. Getzel stared at the man; but whatever hope might have begun to grow in his heart died quickly in the face of the man's iron expression. He barely nodded an answer to the question. The two policemen glanced at each other.

  "What were you looking at so hard on the avenue?" the officer asked.

  Getzel didn't know the answer he wanted. "The trolleys," he said softly.

  Eyes narrowing in disbelief, the Polish-speaker took a sudden step forward and grabbed Getzel by his coat front. "Are you trying to fool us? What was so interesting about the trolleys? And the buildings around here have nothing to do with you. Why were you staring at them?"

  His throat caught in his twisted coat, Getzel could scarcely breathe, let alone answer. His front teeth began to chatter softly.

  Not letting go of the coat, the Polish-speaker said something to the other officer in Russian and got back an approval. Pushing Getzel down to his knees and standing over him, he said: "Listen, little zhid. We know what your kind is up to. We know how you crawled into this country, taking advantage of the generosity of the Soviet government. And we know how you'll worm your way into some other country, spreading your poison and trying to make trouble. Well, remember this. While you're here, we can do anything
we like to you. The same thing that happened to that fellow out in the street we know you were watching us when we picked him up - can happen to you, anytime, anywhere. And when you leave here, we can follow you to the ends of the earth. The arm of the Soviet Union reaches everywhere, so don't try anything ever, not here, not anywhere. Do you understand?"

  With every emphasized word, the man shook Getzel till he thought his neck would snap.

  "Do you understand me?" the man shouted in his face.

  Getzel couldn't say a word.

  "Now, whatever you were looking at out there, you forget it. What has happened in here you forget, too. Do you understand? Forget that you were ever in this building at all. If you ever tell anyone you were here - anyone - we will hear about it and we will find you . . . and you will wish you had never been born. Do you understand, Jew? Do you?"

  His head aching as if it would split, his knees crushed against the hard floor, Getzel could only look imploringly at his interrogator. Finally, he managed a weak nod.

  "Now, get out of here!" The officer jerked him up and released the front of his coat, only to grab him by the back of the neck and push him out into the corridor and down to the front door. Putting his foot against Getzel's backside, he simultaneously let go of his neck and kicked, sending Getzel flying headfirst down the shallow steps onto the sidewalk. The door slammed closed behind the policeman; then everything was still.

  Getzel crawled whimpering to the side of the building and pulled himself to his feet. Slowly, clinging to the walls now deep in shadow, he made his way back to the hotel room. Cheya and Dovid were waiting, beside themselves with worry and fear of what might have happened to him. Getzel said not a word. He let Cheya wash his bloody face, but when she asked him what had happened, he merely shook his head back and forth, back and forth.

  Their train left late that evening. As he sat in his assigned seat with the lights of Moscow disappearing behind him, Getzel was still shaking his head back and forth, as if to deny everything.