Random Acts of Heroic Love

by Danny Scheinmann

  But the men have already picked Eleni up by her feet and shoulders and are struggling to get her on to the back of the van.

  ‘Please be careful.’ Leo takes hold of her head to protect it. Carlos backs on to the van but as Leo tries to step up his knee gives way and he slips and falls backwards. Carlos loses his grip and Eleni falls on top of Leo. She is much heavier dead than alive. She is rigid and cold and Leo struggles to pull himself out.

  She lies there like a slaughtered sheep ready for market, with no semblance of dignity. There is nothing to tie her down or keep her from bouncing on the bumpy roads. It is all so piecemeal and makeshift. While Eleni was alive he had been charmed by the chaos of South America; now he craves an ambulance, cleanliness, efficiency. He wants an authority he can trust, guilt to be apportioned and a system of redress. With so much chaos already in his head, he desperately seeks external order.

  As he watches Eleni sliding around in the back, Leo becomes sensitive to every pothole in the road and begs Carlos to drive carefully. For once it is not taken as an insult and Carlos slows to a crawl. They drive right through town and no one seems in the slightest bit perturbed by a van with a corpse in the back. Eventually they arrive at a graveyard.

  ‘I thought we were going to a morgue,’ Leo says.

  ‘It is here, señor, at the back,’ Carlos reassures him.

  It is menacingly dark; Leo can just make out the gravestones and the outline of a small chapel. The front gates are closed and Carlos hoots. After a while an old thin man appears in the headlights and limps up the gravel path holding a torch. He opens the gates and invites Carlos to drive through and park behind the chapel.

  They pull up outside a heavy stone structure, which, with its sharply pointed roof, reminds Leo of an Egyptian pyramid. The attendant, hobbling back from the gate, smiles a toothless tobacco-stained grin. Do I have to leave her with him? Leo wonders, remembering that human organs are traded in South America. The guidebooks were full of stories of unsuspecting travellers being drugged in bars and waking up the next day in some godforsaken alley with a large scar and a kidney missing. Leo battles against haunting imagery from horror films and nightmares. Carlos leaves the headlights on so they can see the door of the pyramid, which is half-open. Candles are flickering inside, there seems to be no electricity.

  They carry Eleni in. It is damp and surprisingly cold for a chamber that is not refrigerated. The room is bare except for five concrete slabs; one holds the corpse of an old man. There are no windows, and a stench of bleach and stale flesh hangs in the air. Leo’s stomach lurches and quivers. Up on the high grey stone ceiling ghosts dance in the candlelight. The men put Eleni on the central slab.

  Leo is crying, ‘I can’t leave her here. It’s like a dungeon.’ As he speaks the ghosts answer back and his voice echoes around the room.

  ‘Señor, it is best to leave now,’ says Carlos.

  Leo grabs her icy hand and his sobs are amplified by the mocking devils in the ceiling until the morgue howls with him. His resolve to live for Eleni vanishes, now he wants death, he wants communion with her.

  ‘She is already in heaven, señor. Her spirit has left her body. Come on, let’s go back to the hospital.’

  ‘I won’t leave her. I won’t ever leave her.’ A draught blows in from outside and extinguishes two candles. ‘You see, she is still here.’

  Carlos and the attendant exchange a glance.

  ‘Eleni, Eleni,’ Leo shouts at full voice. ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘Eleni,’ the walls bounce back. ‘Go, go.’

  The corpse of the old man watches silently. He had slipped away unnoticed and content. No one had fought for him. But Eleni was only twenty-one years old, just two weeks away from her twenty-second birthday. She wanted a family. She loved life. Growing up, Eleni was always the first to get dirty, jump in puddles and roll in mud. As a young teenager she would climb olive trees and skinny-dip in mountain streams. Leo was envious of her affinity with nature; he admired her for the way she would bushwhack through mountain forests in search of waterfalls or dive head first into a cold English sea in May. Her connection to the world was as a baby to its mother.

  ‘Eleni, Eleni, come back,’ he thrashes the air and pulls at his shirt.

  ‘We have to get him out of here, he’s losing his mind,’ Carlos says to the attendant.

  They try to take Leo by the arm but he pushes them off, ‘Eleni, don’t go without me.’

  ‘Eleni . . . without me,’ the ghosts reply. Carlos grabs Leo round the waist and pulls him towards the door.

  ‘Señor, you must go. You need to rest.’

  ‘I’ll never leave you, Eleni,’ Leo thunders into the void. Another candle blows out and their shadows loom on the wall behind the old corpse. And as the light glimmers over its face the corpse seems to leap into life and stare angrily at the disturbance.

  The attendant panics, ‘Oh mother of Jesus, help us. The morgue is alive.’ He bolts for the door. Leo is kicking and crying and begging for Eleni to come back. Carlos tugs him with all his strength. ‘Hijo de puta, get out of here before the devil has you.’

  Carlos pulls Leo backwards, and as they crash through the door a breeze blows out the last candles. The attendant dives in with his key, slams the door closed and locks it. Leo buckles on to the grass holding his head on his knees, rocking and sobbing, rocking and sobbing.

  Carlos leans on the van, breathless. Oh God, oh God, he says to himself. Oh God, deliver me from this awful place.

  Eventually Leo pulls himself to his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says weakly.

  Carlos puts his arms around him and hugs him hard. The two strangers stand like that for a couple of minutes until their two hearts slow to a calmer beat.

  3

  AH THERE YOU ARE. I’M GLAD. I’VE GOT A STORY TO TELL you. Come closer, that’s it, right up to my bed. Don’t be shy. Bring the chair right up. It’s all right, I’m not contagious. You can rest your feet on it if you like. There. I’ve been worried about you, Fischel; you haven’t said a word for days. Your mother said it started when you saw them take me away. Well I’m back now, a little worse for wear maybe, but I’m back and they won’t come for me again. Maybe you’re worried about me, too. You children have finer senses than we give you credit for. You know that I’m going to die, don’t you? It’s all right, my boy . . . don’t speak if you don’t want to . . . you don’t have to say a word. To tell you the truth, for a long time I didn’t even think I’d live this long. Death has been chasing after me for years. I’ve come close to being caught so often that I’ve lost all natural fear of it. Now I see life and death as two lovers embracing. Inseparable. Each obsessed by the other . . . Oh excuse me . . . this wretched cough . . . please pass me . . . the spittoon . . . yes and my hanky . . . thank you. I’m sorry, you can’t bear the sight of it, can you? Here, put it back on the table. Oh dear, does it smell that bad? I’ve got so used to it, I don’t even notice any more. Now listen, they’ve taken everything . . . the workshop . . . everything. But there is one thing that even they cannot steal and that is my story.

  That’s it; get comfortable. I want you to imagine a fast clean river flowing through a dense forest. A pathway, beaten through the trees, leads to the river’s edge. Here the rocks have reached round to create a pool of calm still water. Sitting on the rocks, with their feet dangling in the pool, are a boy and a girl. No one knows they are there. It is their secret place, a place to talk and hold hands. The boy turns to the girl, the girl turns to the boy. Their hearts are racing. There is no reason. He gently takes the girl’s head in his hands and for the first time he kisses her. Her lips are as soft as ripe peach. A lock of her curly dark hair falls about his face and an eyelash flutters against his cheek. They close their eyes and feel the forest melt around them. They float upwards and glide with swallows on the summer breeze. Then drift down like falling leaves. ‘I love you,’ he whispers.

  ‘I love you too,’ she sighs. No sooner spoken than their wor
ds are lost in the sound of rushing water and carried downstream to a bigger river, which whisks them off to the sea. The moment is cast in memory for ever. The kiss holds a promise from which there is no return.

  A year later that same boy finds himself once more in a forest with a river running through it. It is a different forest. On his side of the river is the Austro-Hungarian Army, on the other is the might of the Russian Army. It is August 1914, the war is a month old and the boy is me. In my hand is a letter from the girl. It carries her perfume and reminds me of that moment. It begins:

  Moritz, my love,

  You have won my heart and now I can’t stop thinking about you . . .

  I am sitting with my back to a sandbag, waiting to be killed. For the moment it is quiet, there is a lull. Next to me is my best friend Jerzy Ingwer. Next to him is Frantz Király, a burly and unpopular Hungarian peasant boy. On the other side is Piotr Baryslaw, a well-meaning Pole from Cracow who blinks too often. There are others, thousands of others but you don’t need to know them, I hardly remember any of them myself. Oh there is one more, I almost forgot. Lieutenant Neidlein. He is pacing in front of us, all two metres of him. We call him the Great Viennese Sausage. Long, thin and Austrian. He is waiting for the next order.

  Never have I loved life more than in this moment, for the beauty of life is etched in the face of death. How sweet life is. I want to open my every pore and soak it up until I’m rolling full and then inhale it, drink it in and drown in it some more. I am thinking of all the tiny things I took for granted. How golden they now seem; the taste of fresh bread on the Sabbath, the feel of underclothes warmed by the fire in winter, the scrunch of shoes on autumn leaves, the yawning magnificence of a day spent doing nothing. What would I give to live the carefree days once more? But on this day, Fischel, I am sure that I am going to die. I have only been at the front one day and I have seen enough in that day to convince me of it.

  I put the letter down and begin to shake with fear. I long to be back home in Ulanow. I think about my mother and father. I want to see my favourite sister Eidel and the rest of my noisy siblings. But most of all I think of Lotte and our sun-dappled pool by the River San. I see a carpet of kisses unravelling majestically ahead of me. I picture a wedding and try to imagine the children that we might have had. For on that day in Galicia with the Russians bearing down on us, it does not seem possible. They will rip me to shreds with their artillery and trample me into the mud. I will die a virgin in the blood-soaked earth of my homeland. Terror holds me in its icy grip. My mind is dark. I look over to Jerzy Ingwer for reassurance. We grew up together, went to school together, did everything together. I know his feelings as I know my own. I can read him by the glimmers on his face. He is shivering even though it is warm. Jerzy smiles weakly and I know that he too is in Ulanow with his memories. It is the best place to be.

  Fischel, go and bring me that map on the shelf. It will help you understand. Yes, that big one. Find Poland for me . . . There, good, that’s it. Look down here in the south-east, can you see it, there where the River San meets the Tanew. Ulanow. Have you found it? That’s where all your family is from. You have to remember, Fischel, that back then there was no Poland. This bit up here, the north, was Russia and this bit in the south called Galicia was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Look, you see how close Ulanow was to Russia – barely fifteen kilometres. So close in fact that we would regularly cross over and trade with them. I learnt to speak Russian from an early age and my uncle Josef used to take me over to help him sell crucifixes. Don’t look so shocked, Fischel, Josef made all the crucifixes in Ulanow, no one could match him for detail. He took great pleasure nailing Jesus to the cross twice a day. It was a revenge of sorts for the persecution he suffered as a boy at the hands of the Cossacks when he lived over the border.

  Now, find Lvov on the map. It was called Lemberg back then. Go forty kilometres south-east, you see a little blue line there. That’s the Gnila Lipa River and halfway down there is a village called Rohatyn. Got it? And there are some woods to the north. Well that’s where Jerzy and I are sitting dreaming of Ulanow. We’re not so very far from home but it feels like a million miles.

  I try and recall the precise moment I fell in love with Lotte. It was some time in 1912; I was young, a few years older than you, about sixteen, and it all began with a pair of shoes. Do you remember your grandfather, Fischel? Perhaps not, he died when you were four years old. He was a poor cobbler and when I had time I would help him out in his shop. I didn’t like it much but one day the door opened and there before me was Lotte Steinberg and her father. I knew who she was, everyone knew the Steinbergs, they were the wealthy furriers with the big house on the edge of town. They had come to collect a pair of dress shoes that my father had made for Lotte.

  ‘Can I try them on now, Daddy?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course you can, angel. Go on, young man,’ Steinberg thundered. He had a huge voice.

  Lotte sat down on a chair and I knelt down in front of her. She kicked off her shoes and the insignificant denuding of her feet had the same effect on me as if she had disrobed entirely. I gasped and blushed and couldn’t move. I caught myself staring at her ankles and then her toes, and then I didn’t know where to look. After a moment’s hesitation I picked her left foot up in my hand and felt its loveliness. It was pale and delicate and I guided it as tenderly as I could into the new shoe. And then the same with her right, but this time I hovered and fussed over it because my hands had urgently acquired a need to touch her.

  Lotte stood up and walked purposefully around the room turning her feet this way and that.

  ‘So how are they?’ her father boomed.

  ‘Yes, they’re perfect,’ she replied happily, ‘very comfortable. I shall wear them to the waltz.’

  First love is an extraordinary thing, I felt jubilant and melancholic all at once; one minute I was skipping through the cornfields, the next I was sulking in dark corners. My mind was in constant conversation with her, she was the subject of countless florid daydreams. At home I meandered aimlessly, oblivious to my loudmouthed family. Sometimes I would find myself staring out of the window when the last thing I could remember was reading on a chair. I was on the cusp of manhood and love was my chaperone. I was like a bud opening in spring, elated and confused by my new awakening. I was changing physically, hair was sprouting on my face and body, my sweat took on a musky odour, my muscles gained definition, I was a butterfly emerging from a pupa and I was embarrassed by my own beauty.

  I went out of my way to pass Lotte’s house, running useless errands up and down town like a demented donkey, but whenever I saw her, love robbed me of my tongue. What could I say without betraying myself? When I told Jerzy that I was in love with Lotte Steinberg he shook his head and held up his hands. ‘Don’t waste your time. Why would Lotte care for the son of a cobbler when she can have who she wants?’ He was right. Her parents were grooming her for a big society wedding in Vienna. They knew all the wealthy Jews there and were already taking her to the great waltzes to meet prospective husbands. Her father was looking for men who had experience of the world, men who earned money and could provide for her. I was the last person on earth he would have taken into his family.

  In the end it was my sister Eidel who told her that I was pining like a moonstruck dog. I was furious with Eidel but the next time I saw Lotte she walked right up to me and said hello. I was taking a sack of firewood to old Mr Kaminsky’s place when she approached. I was so shocked to see her coming towards me that I dropped it on my foot and yelped in pain. She pretended not to notice, but much later when we had got to know each other she told me that she had found the incident most endearing. I remember the summer of 1913 as the sweetest time of my life. We still had no idea of the terrible things that would happen to us.

  Fischel, please could you pass me the water? My throat is dry . . . thank you. Don’t look so worried. I’m all right . . . well, perhaps I should be resting but these doctors say the strangest th
ings. One minute they tell you that you’re going to die and the next they tell you to rest. So I ask you what is the point of resting if you are going to die anyway? Won’t I be resting enough soon? Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t want me to talk about it. Come here, Fisch, give me a hug.

  I’m sure you know what happened next. Anyone old enough to remember knows exactly where they were when they heard that Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife had been assassinated in Sarajevo. It was one of those moments when a whole nation quivers in shock. The world turned on its head and nothing was quite the same ever again. It was a bit like what happened here in 1933 when Hitler won.

  It was a balmy hot evening towards the end of June 1914. We were at the Steinbergs’ annual summer party. Children were running riot through the garden, pockets stuffed with fine biscuits. Labourers and craftsmen lounged in deckchairs like ruddy-faced dukes as waiters in white gloves served nibbles and schnapps. No one paid any attention to the overdressed string quartet that was toiling in the heat. By this time Jerzy and I had been conscripted and were proudly wearing our uniforms. Lotte was busy being the perfect hostess, chatting politely to the guests. She dared not pay me any special attention. Jerzy and I stood by the house together talking of how I might win her hand. ‘Maybe if you were to move up the ranks and become an officer her father would let you marry,’ Jerzy offered.

  ‘What chance is there of that?’ I said, dejected.

  ‘You never know, there are some prominent Jewish officers. You just have to work hard at it. Make a career of it.’

  From the corner of my eye I saw Mrojek, Ulanow’s police captain, burst into the garden. He was in a sweat. He must have run the entire length of town. He quickly downed a vodka to steady his nerves and then stood on a chair and begged for quiet. The quartet broke off abruptly and the revellers gathered round. He announced in a solemn tone that he had just received a telegraph from Vienna. The Archduke was dead. As he read it out he burst into tears. The party erupted in protest and lament. ‘The Serbs will pay for this!’ they shouted. Lotte shot me a worried glance from across the crowd. Jerzy and I knew what it meant for us.