The boy looked at the maid, her flowery scarf, her gleaming medallion of the archangel Michael slaying the dragon-Jew, which she had shown him in secret but now wore over her blouse. His hand came up to the fresh stubble where his sidecurls used to be. Never again would Mama spool them onto rollers, proudly, while he recited his bedtime prayers.
NIGHT HAD FALLEN for the third time when they stopped in front of a wooden gate.
“My mother’s farm,” Florina said.
A peasant raised a lantern above the cart bed crammed with furniture. He chuckled.
“They robbed us long enough,” Florina said.
The man leaned his stubbly jaw to Florina’s face. “Did you see, on your way in?”
Florina crossed herself. “The earth was swelling … scabbing … we heard groans and—”
“Prostie! They should make sure they’re dead, they should let the bodies cool.” Again, the farmhand raised his lantern above the cart bed. “You weren’t afraid?”
“Petrified. The trees were chasing us—”
“I mean, to work for them. Don’t you know Jews sell Christian women?”
Florina laughed. “Not the ones I worked for.”
His vexed grumble. “I didn’t think you’d be back.”
A silence.
“Help me with my boy,” Florina said. “He’s asleep.”
“Your what?”
“Hush!”
“You married!”
“I had to.”
“His father—”
“Is dead,” Josef said.
Carrying the boy into the kitchen, Florina looked over her shoulder, then she whispered in his ear, “Never take off your pants in front of anyone. Ever.”
The boy stared at his mother’s brooch, fastened on Florina’s pinafore.
“Mama is dead,” he said.
“Hush!”
Florina took off a skirt. Florina never undressed entirely, she did not have a white nightgown, a pale blue quilted bed jacket. She did not read in bed, did not know how to read. She took off her kerchief, black since she called him Anghel, my son, husband killed, Odessa front. The bed tilted when she sat on it. He rolled toward her on the soft incline, came to a stop against her wide backside. His feet nested between her calves.
In the kitchen’s four-poster bed, Florina and the boy curled up for the night. Under the eiderdown in which he still smelled his mother’s sleep, Florina lulled him: “To live, Mama wants Anghel to live.…”
Florina and the boy cut through the cattails as bells called across the fields. She looked over her shoulder, stopped.
“You’ll sit when I sit, you’ll stand when I stand, and when the priest places the wafer on your tongue, you’ll ask Christ to forgive you. Soon we’ll go to the river and you won’t have to be a Jew anymore.” She smiled. “After you are baptized, you too will fly to Heaven.”
“In Heaven, I will see Mama—”
“Hush!”
They walked, silent, through the tall grass.
EVERY SUNDAY, the bearded priest paced in front of the pews swinging a censer that released, with each oscillation, a tangy cloud of myrrh. Behind the cloud, the cassock’s black sleeves puffed up like wings straining to unfold, the walls swelled with light, the icons’ eyes were furry bees, In this joyous Eucharistic liturgy, in resurrectional felicity, in this bread, in this wine … burn me with longing, O Christ!
Anghel took Jesus’s body on his tongue, and His Blood, and God cried tears of gold and Anghel learned that Jews were responsible for what befell them, because Jews refused to see the light.
Winter. Spring.
After Florina left to milk the cows, Anghel set out with the eiderdown. He picked daisies, anemones, bluebells, buttercups. As he had seen Florina do, he placed the bouquet at the base of the field shrine behind the vegetable patch.
“Pearela,” he whispered, staring at the red-brown rivulets on Jesus’s bony toes. The gnarled knees and scrawny thighs were entirely different from his baby sister’s cuddly limbs, but those nailed palms surely knew of Pearela with the prong in her cheek. He swaddled the thin ankles and rusty nails with one end of the eiderdown and wrapped himself in the other end.
“Hie lee lu lee la,” he hummed softly.
The first warm rays grazed the ridge when Florina lifted eiderdown and sleeping boy. She carried them into the kitchen. She smiled as her broad hand rubbed hot tuica on Anghel’s chest, but the boy was careful not to smile back, fully smile. If his dimple showed, Florina might think he was trying to bewitch her, she might tap his forehead to gauge whether he had grown his Jew horns, she might wonder whether he was, in fact, stealing what she was giving him.
Summer, a fence was erected behind the shrine, along the tracks skirting the horse meadow. On this side of the fence was Romania; on the other side was Hungary. On this side of the fence, men started to wear the armband of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, the Iron Guard.
Winter, Anghel learned to hitch the oxen to the plow. He learned that he liked to lead them to the field, to feel their warm hides, that they talked in hollow moans. But he never shared his midday meal with the field hands. Instead, he went to his hideout in the bluff where he sat and watched the leaves falling together, and landing apart.
*
THEN IT WAS spring again and maybe they were butterflies, the white flickerings along the sealed boxcars, maybe they were not fingers begging for water, and his name was Anghel whose father died in Odessa, whose mother was Florina who pressed her medallion every morning to his forehead and coached: “You will not be first in class. If you understand, don’t show it. Don’t answer the teacher’s questions.”
*
THE DOGS barked before the rooster crowed. Anghel rose from bed and looked out the kitchen window. He saw three silhouettes emerge from the mist above the river. He hushed the dogs.
After Florina left with the wheelbarrow and the rake, he set out for the shed in the meadow—where else would the fugitives have gone without alerting the neighbor’s hounds? He started and stopped on the sodden earth to forestall its sucking sounds. He crouched against the shed’s wall and placed an eye to a chink between two logs.
A man, a woman, a little girl.
The man was fastening a black cube to his forehead. His lips moved as he swayed back and forth. The woman was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. She was tying a blue ribbon in the girl’s hair. The woman raised her head at the sound of an approaching train. The train slowed around the bend, hissed, gathered speed. The woman’s hands came to her face. The man whispered in a language Anghel had not known he still remembered. The woman sighed. The little girl fell asleep in the woman’s lap.
Another train approached, slowed around the bend, stopped.
The man and the woman exchanged a frightened glance. The man’s torso swayed more quickly, back and forth. His lips moved again.
One hand pressing her lower back, the other flat against the wall, the woman hauled herself up. She was pregnant, very pregnant. She peeked out of the shed’s window. “It’s him, the Rebbe, quick!” The woman’s face beamed.
The man’s brow lifted in bewilderment. He held on to the little girl as the door of the shed scraped open.
The woman ran to the train, a train of boxcars with wide-open doors and people milling about inside.
“Rebbe!” the woman called to a Jew who sat in one of the openings, reading a book.
One shot. The woman’s hand came to her chest, to the spreading stain. She stumbled.
The man rushed out of the shed, the black cube on his forehead.
Horses neighing, hooves bucking, Hungarian guards toppling the fence, crossing the Nadăş River.
The little girl stood in the shed’s doorway.
Anghel’s hand came down on her mouth. Her muffled cry under his palm, “Mama!,” as he pulled her behind the shed, to the ground, as he told her not to move, that her mother wanted her to live.
The train pulled away.
Peasants from nearby villages were dismantling market stalls and loading the parts onto carts. One peasant told, over and over, how the militiamen had whipped the fleeing Jew, how the Jew had let out an astonishing cry. A bottle passed from hand to hand. There were belches and cheers, for the land that soon would be cleansed of Jews.
In the market square, the girl’s father was tied to a post. His shoulders folded forward, his head drooped. Sweat drew his beard and sidecurls to a point. The arms, thighs, shins were slashed—it was impossible to see; it was impossible not to see, where the legs met, the split flesh where blood spurted through crusted blood.
Three men in the Arrow Cross uniform kept guard, their black boots stomping the mess of crimson sawdust.
In the recess where they hid, Anghel and the little girl heard the moan: “Wasser.…”
The girl dashed to the village pipe, cupped her hands.
Anghel pulled her back, held her face against his chest.
“Tatta …” the girl stammered as water dripped through her fingers.
After the last militiaman had disappeared inside the tavern, the two children crossed the square. The girl brought her cupped hands to her father’s lips. “Tatta …”
The folded figure moaned, licked water from her fingers. Blood came out of the man’s mouth, and words: “Mi-la, your name now is Mila. Go to Zalman Stern.…”
Another gush of blood and words: “With my own, see to it, see that Gershon Heller is buried with his own.”
“I will,” the boy whispered and his hand pressed the girl’s mouth to his chest, to his shirt of coarse linen, so her whimper would not be heard.
The tavern door opened. Anghel pulled the girl past the bullwhip and the wound. He led her to his hollow in the bluff where they heard Florina call across the fields.
“Anghel! Anghel!” And again, “Anghel! Anghel!”
When all the lights in the village had gone dark, the two children returned to the market square. The body had been untied from the post; it lay across the tray of a wheelbarrow. The boy took hold of the shafts and pulled. Behind, leaning against the barrow’s rim, the little girl pushed.
Under the poplars at the bottom of the sloping meadow, the boy loosened the earth with his shovel. The little girl scooped the soil with her bare hands. Together they pulled and pushed the body in the shallow grave. The boy heaped earth over the body; the little girl helped. When they were done, the boy said, “Later, I’ll see that he is buried in the Jewish cemetery.”
The girl nodded. Then: “Tatta said if anything happens I must go to Zalman Stern in Nagyszeben. The train will say Sibiu but it’s the same as Nagyszeben. If I can’t get on the train I must run from the border. Tatta said I must run right away.”
“I’ll help you get on. Don’t be afraid, all the trains go slow around the bend. I’ll jump on over there. You’ll wait here. When I come by, grab my hand. Don’t be afraid. I’ll pull you up fast. Just look at my hand. If the conductor comes by, say you lost your ticket. No, say your parents are in the next car. Say it in Hungarian and don’t speak the Jew language. You’ll know when to get off when the conductor calls, ‘Sibiu!’ ”
The boy brushed the dirt off her coat. He tied the ribbon in her hair.
“Mila,” she said, pointing to her chest.
“Anghel,” he said, pointing to his chest.
“Where is your mother?” Mila asked.
“Florina—”
“Your mother, where is she?”
“Mama is dead. Tatta is dead. Pearela is dead.”
“Shayfeleh.…” Mila’s hand stroked Anghel’s cheek, and he remembered that it meant little lamb.
Sibiu, Southern Transylvania
THE STERN children were not to open the front door, so when four-year-old Atara heard the knock, she ran to her mother in the kitchen.
A little girl was standing in the doorway, her coat torn, a dirty ribbon in her hair.
Hannah squinted at the child. “Mila Heller? The daughter of Gershon and Rachel?” Hannah took the little girl in her arms. “Zalman! Come quickly!”
The little girl collapsed.
Hannah would tell so many times the story of Mila’s knock—blessed be the Lord who kept watch over the little girl, how else did a child so young find the right train, how did she find her way from the train station to their home? Hannah would tell so many times how she washed the soil out of Mila’s hair, how she scoured the heavy dirt from under Mila’s nails, that Hannah’s children born years later thought they remembered five-year-old Mila Heller arriving on their doorstep.
Hannah also told of Mila’s silence. “What happened to your parents, child?”
All summer long, Mila Heller did not speak. But she did cry at night in the bed she shared with Atara, and Atara held her hand.
On the eve of the Day of Atonement, Hannah circled a rooster above the boys’ heads, three times, then she circled a hen over the girls’ heads, three times. She lowered the cackling fowl to the ground. “Place your foot on its neck,” Hannah coached Mila.
Mila shook her head, no.
“Surely you remember this from home,” Hannah said. “You need not press on it. Just brush your foot against its head and repeat after me: You to death and I to life … do it.” Then, softly: “You don’t have to say it aloud, child, but think it to yourself.”
Tears filled Mila’s eyes.
Atara cried out: “Why does the chicken have to die?”
“So the children will not die.” Once more, Hannah lowered the fowl to the ground.
Staring into the hen’s darting eye, Mila extended a shaking leg.
Hannah coached: “You to death.…”
Mila pulled back her leg.
“Why, why does the chicken have to die?” Atara insisted.
“So we won’t die for our sins. The chicken is our Kappures. It will die instead of us.”
Atara frowned. “But don’t we empty our sins into the river?”
Hannah sighed, placed the fowl back in its crate. With her apron, she dried Mila’s tears and her own.
That evening, as Atara held her breath in the dark, still surprised by the proximity of the orphan girl with whom she was sharing her bed, Mila spoke: “Atara is a pretty name.”
Mila had spoken; she had spoken to Atara.
From then on, Mila spoke to Atara every night. During the day, she was silent, but the two girls talked in the dark. Atara learned about Mila’s unborn sibling, about Mila’s mother running toward the open boxcar, calling, “Rebbe!”
Later she learned that Mila had decided she was allowed to love Hannah.
One night, Atara was half asleep when Mila asked, “Do you believe me about my mama running out to save the Rebbe?”
Atara was silent. When Mila was not around, Zalman had said that Mila’s mother could not have seen the Rebbe. Boxcars did not have open doors, not when they were full of Jews, not in the spring of ’44, not in Hungary, Zalman had said.
“You Atara, do you believe me?” Mila insisted.
“I … maybe we should pray, now, for the coming of the Messiah?” Atara liked to pray with Mila. She could tell that in Mila’s prayer, the messiah’s coming was not the glory of the Temple rebuilt but a kitchen with Mila’s mother in it, a bedtime with the story Mila’s father had not finished telling her.
FOUR months after Mila’s arrival at the Sternses’, Soviet and Romanian forces recaptured her hometown. As soon as Jews could travel again, Zalman set out to mark the sites of Jewish remains. He wanted the bones undisturbed, especially the small luz bone connecting neck to spine, the first to feel the Dew of Resurrection when Trumpets called the End of Days.
In the astonishing emptiness he found when he crossed into northern Transylvania, Zalman prayed: Dear Lord, show me why You spared me, show me toward what end You spared Hannah and our children and the little girl, Blimela—daughter of Gershon and Rachel Heller.
Zalman had intended to stay at the Rebbe’s court, in Szatmár, after his wedding, but his parents had insisted he return home to Sibiu, south of the new border, when Transylvania was divided between Hungary and Romania, in August 1940. Unlike his yeshiva mates in Szatmár, Zalman and his community in Sibiu had not been deported.
*
ANGHEL watched the Jew who stood on the ice ledge.
The Jew cast a net in the river and disagreed with himself:
“Sanhedrin 97b. Also, 98a.… Will the dead rise naked or clothed?
“What of Isaiah 26:19? What of Ezekiel 37:12–14?”
The Jew extended his arms; he bent, extended, and drew the line draped with dangling algae. He dragged the net with the bodies, the two sisters who returned from deportation and were drowned by neighbors. He laid one body on the horse cart, then the second body. The net’s leaded lip meandered through the splintered reeds. He seized the edge of the flatbed. The horse’s iron shoe struck the frosted earth.
Hidden in the undergrowth, Anghel followed the Jew who followed the dray horse along the Nadăş River. The Jew continued to argue with himself:
“But Zalman, what of those who never went to the grave, whose bones are licked by wolves?
“They will not live again.
“What about Kethuboth 35b?
“Ah, on this our rabbis are not unanimous.”
Anghel shouldered through the bushes, onto the towpath. He stood in front of Zalman and pointed to the line of poplars. “There. Another dead Jew.”
Zalman’s gaze followed the boy’s finger pointing to hardened clumps of soil.
“Yes, there,” the boy insisted.
“How do I trust this here is a Jew?” Zalman asked.
The boy pointed to Zalman’s coat.
“Anyone can put on a black coat,” Zalman said.
The boy frowned.
“You mean, who but a Jew wants to put on such a coat?”
The boy tapped his forehead. “He had a black cube.”
“Tefilin!”
I Am Forbidden Page 2