by Helen Burko
“With me, you won’t long for it. My home will be your home, and you’ll find warmth there.”
“Like now?” She smiled and pressed against him.
“Even more than now!”
“You are so kind. I never thought that people like you could be so kind.”
“People like me? What kind of person am I? I don’t understand you.”
She laughed mischievously.
“Why do you laugh? Do my words sound like a joke? Do you think they are only the words of a man who lusts after a woman and is ready to promise her the world? Tell me, do you really think you won’t be happy with me?”
“Oh, I will be… I will be! But…”
“But what?”
“Nothing! I don’t know…”
“You’re hiding something from me.”
“No, nothing.”
“You can’t hide ‘nothing.’ If you hide it, it must be something.”
“You talk like a lawyer.”
“Despite that, I reveal everything, and you reveal nothing.”
“I have nothing to say about myself.”
“I seem to know so little about you.”
She laughed and closed her eyes as if she didn’t want to hear the words or as if the words meant nothing to her.
“We have met by chance and become friends,” he continued seriously, ignoring her mocking. “You agreed to come with me to America, and I believe you did that of your own free will, right? But one thing I can’t understand. Was it because you wanted to go out into the world or because you really like me?”
“Why do you ask that? Are you uneasy?”
“Yes, I’m uneasy. Saying that you could leave me and find another man and you wouldn’t care if I left you disturbs me.”
She laughed merrily.
“Don’t laugh! Tell me, why did you agree to come with me to America? Your behavior is inconsistent with your words. On the one hand, you show me you love me, and on the other…”
She smiled. “I don’t know why I came with you. Sometimes I do things without thinking. I’m very impulsive.”
“Perhaps you doubt you’ll be happy with me?”
“I don’t know if I doubt that or not. I don’t think about it, and I don’t want to think about it, especially now.”
“Perhaps you have left a friend in Harcov, the city you grew up in?”
“Do you have to know?”
“Yes. Call it a man’s curiosity.”
“A man shouldn’t be curious.” She stroked his cheek with her warm hand. “Curiosity is the road to hell.” She laughed. “I don’t like a man who tries to drag intimate details out of his loved one…like who she was with in her past and how many times she was with him. Isn’t it enough that I have everything a man could want?”
She laughed again, but this time it was a provocative laugh that echoed in the room. Her laughter disarmed him and confused him. Perhaps she was right not to want to talk about her past. What was the use of it? Did he care that someone he never met had been with her? Was he so in love with her that he was jealous of her past?
“How old are you?” he asked in a casual tone.
“Curious again?”
“Yes,” he said aggressively. “I want to know how old you are.”
“Eighteen.” She tried to joke. “Are you trying to provoke me? I’ve had enough of men who try to provoke women.”
“No, you are really very young, although in experience you are like a woman aged one hundred years old!”
She laughed again.
Now her laughter angered him. He could learn nothing of her past from her answers, and he couldn’t discern what she thought. That increased his curiosity. What he had been able to find out was that she was intelligent, educated—although he didn’t know where and in what—had a strong character, and yet was soft and womanly. There was always an air about her as if she had revealed a little and concealed a lot and as if she were hiding something deep inside of her. His legal training made him want to ask her many questions. She angered him with her laughter, her skimpy answers, her double-meaning words, her mockery, her stubbornness, and her teasing, and she had been like that all the way. Why? On the one hand, she believed in him and was passionate, and on the other hand, she remained reserved and strange. He was honest and candid with her, but she was restrained and sarcastic, and he didn’t know what to call behavior like that.
“I have the impression you have had many men.”
He was sure this statement would make her lose her temper and begin to talk. That was the way he behaved with witnesses in a trial, but she remained calm and said, “Oh, you men! Why are you jealous of me, liebling? Why don’t I ask you how many women you’ve had before me?”
“Because I told you I had a wife and even a daughter,” he answered nervously. “But you?”
She laughed yet again and pinched his nose, and her eyes sparkled mischievously. She answered him in an indifferent tone.
“I, for example, don’t care how many women you’ve had, one or a hundred, because you’re a man and need a woman, just as I’m a woman and need a man. I don’t need many men, definitely not.” she smiled lightly. “But one man is necessary, do you understand that? I think such a conversation between two young people is irrelevant. I know you have a lot of questions, such as ‘What did the men in my life look like? Were they tall or short, strong or weak, passionate or restrai¬ned?’ You could continue like that endlessly…”
Her answer dissatisfied him again, and he lay beside her like a hurt child.
“Good… Since you are so curious, I’ll tell you everything.”
“But candidly, without hiding anything! I want you to be honest with me, as I am with you!”
“Will you believe me?”
“The truth can be recognized. How did you express it? ‘You are a lawyer.’”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with being a lawyer but with psychology.” She taunted him. “So, listen. I’ve had a hundred men, all of them passionate. They loved vodka and caviar, they swore easily, and they called every woman a whore.”
“Don’t make fun of me!” he interrupted her with restrained anger. “Enough… l won’t ask you another question!”
“Excellent!” She placed her head on his chest. “From now on, you won’t ask me any more questions, and we’ll live together peacefully for as long as it lasts.”
He didn’t respond. These words, too, had a double meaning. He felt a hidden jab in “as long as it lasts.”
He repeated the words to himself.
When Rachel saw that he was really angry with her, she put her arms around his neck and began to cover him with kisses; however, he remained indifferent. As much as she tried to put him back in a good mood, he became more and more tense and stiff, although he began to blame himself. What did he expect from her? Why was he angry at this young woman who had captured his heart so quickly? Perhaps he felt that her love was cold and unfeeling? But what exactly did he want from her? Did he expect her to love him as strongly as he did her? Is there any other way to love? Was their meeting a fleeting chance encounter? No, he didn’t want their love to be a passing event; he wanted to be together with her for the rest of his life!
He lay quietly next to her, her head on his chest, and thought of the pros and cons. Lately, he had come to the conclusion that it all was the fault of the war, that the war had made him like this, uneasy. It had unbalanced him. He remembered his youth in New York and some of the girls he had slept with there and in Los Angeles, but he’d never wanted to know if he was the first. He hadn’t cared to know. No, he met a girl, had an affair with her, and parted from her without any complaints or claims because what else can two young people expect from each other? I enjoyed it and you enjoyed it. He remembered that he never asked his partner about her past. What for? So, Rachel was right; it’s more interesting that way.
Once a friend of his, Eddie Adler, also a lawyer, said to him, “Even if your own wife wanted t
o spend some time masked so you wouldn’t know who she was, the unknown is more provocative and more interesting.” He was still a student at that time, and he agreed.
But not now; now he cared. First of all, he wondered why she didn’t refer at all to the time she had spent in the concentration camp and didn’t even say a word about what happened to her to send her away, as though it wasn’t worthwhile to talk about it. She was indifferent to all of it, and maybe that was why he became curious. The first quiet night he spent sleeping with her made him feel he slept with a woman he didn’t know yet. Only now, after all their shared and risky adventures, he felt he wanted to know her better, and he would ask questions! He would try to dispel all his doubts and satisfy the curiosity that disturbed him. He thought about the conversations they’d had in Lvov and in Warsaw, and he asked her suddenly, although he knew this wasn’t the time for questions such as these, “What was the name of the concentration camp where you were interned? What was your work there? How did the Nazis act toward a woman like you? You have no idea how much I want to know all that. Until now, we had no time to talk about it, but now… Please, answer me seriously and without laughing or joking. Don’t be angry that I disturb you with questions… I’m like that. I want to know everything.”
“Oh, Jacob, liebling.” She raised her head. “I’ll try to satisfy your curiosity. So, you want to know what happened to me in the concentration camp?”
“Yes, I want to know. Please, don’t judge me and try to understand that I love you very much and want to know everything about you.”
“All right, I’ll try to tell you, even though I hate to talk about it. As I told you, I was in many different concentration camps, but mostly I worked on farms. I didn’t have it so bad… I had food to eat. The work in the camps was, of course, very difficult, but that is the nature of work. Man doesn’t work of his own free will, and so it seems very difficult.”
“Didn’t the Nazis torture you?” he asked, glad she was finally answering him seriously.
“Torture me? Why should they? The regime was strict of course, like in every prisoner’s camp, but nothing special happened, and only those who refused to work were punished and not fed.”
“Nothing special happened there, you say?” He was amazed. “Didn’t they gas and burn people! Didn’t they murder men and women! Didn’t you know about it in the camp?”
“I personally didn’t see it, but I heard rumors. But please, let’s forget it!”
“It can’t be forgotten!” he said with sorrow. “We mustn’t forget it!”
“Jacob, liebling,” she tried to calm him. “No one knows what really happened in the war, and we cannot criticize what really happened. History sometimes errs, and in wartime, many mistakes are made and many are hurt.”
“Of course mistakes are made,” he said in a calm tone. “And what mistakes. But history doesn’t err… Man errs! History only lists all the mistakes and never covers them up. For some reason, we keep making the same mistakes and keep churning in the same mud. It’s a miracle the crazy devil’s dance is finished.”
“It hasn’t finished yet,” she said, gazing at the gray ceiling. “After the victory over Germany, the Americans will surely fight the Russians. Until now, they both had the common aim to fight the Germans, but they cannot live in peace together because communism can never make peace with capitalism. Sooner or later, they will fight, and then Germany will rise again… You can be sure of that.”
“It must not happen!”
“But it will happen anyway, whether you want it to or not. I can promise you that those two will not be able to digest all of Germany and will have to reerect it. They will fight until the dynamite bursts and then…”
“How violent your thoughts are,” he said in surprise. “Your knowledge of politics is amazing…a regular diplomat! Where were you educated? You see, I had no idea how educated you are in politics. And you are so convincing. Go on! I enjoy hearing you talk seriously.”
“Oh, please.” She laughed. “How curious you are. I feel as though I’m standing before a judge who is interrogating me. What else do you want to know? What I have studied? All right, I’ll tell you that, too. I attended a school for foreign languages and even excelled in my studies.”
“And you know many languages?”
“Yes, I can speak some languages.”
“Do you know English?”
“Yes, I speak English, French, and a few other languages.”
“Okay!” He hugged her. “You see, you little witch? You didn’t tell me anything about that. What other languages do you know?”
“Outside of Russian, which is, after all, my mother tongue, and besides English and French, I know a little Polish, I’m fluent in German, which I learned while on the farms, and I speak a little Yiddish, my mother’s language.”
“You’re a regular polyglot! Wonderful! Excellent! Now I know why you know so much of world affairs.”
In his enthusiasm, he jumped off the sofa, lifted her up in his arms, and jumped around the room.
“You see, you clever little devil…” He was aglow with joy. “…I finally inveigled you into telling me something about yourself! I knew at once you weren’t just a common young woman. Now you are dearer to me than ever.”
“How charming you are, liebling.” She kissed him on his lips. “I thought that your kind couldn’t be so charming. You really do deserve to be loved.” She put her arms around his neck and held on. He was extremely excited and soon became passionate. He didn’t know why he was so excited, but he realized it wasn’t because she knew so many languages, but because he wanted to throw off all restraint. For so many years, he had been bitter and in a bad mood, and now, on this beautiful day, with this beautiful young woman and with the birds singing, those feelings were aroused, mostly because he had succeeded in knowing more about her, which brought them closer together. This was the way he had acted with Doris when they had gone on vacation, and this was the way he had acted when Lillian had tickled him and made him laugh.
“And now,” she said when he had calmed down a little, “let’s get dressed. You’ve forgotten that we have slept and argued almost the whole day, and we haven’t eaten yet. Marta probably left a long time ago. We slept so deeply that we didn’t hear her go out. I want to wander around the forest, and then sleep again and eat again and sleep again… And sleep… And sleep… And eat… And, oh, how good it will be.”
He continued to carry her around, and he was so intoxicated with his feelings that he didn’t pay attention to her words. He plunged his face into her hair and then covered her with kisses: her face, her nose, her neck, and her lovely white breasts.
Suddenly he remembered that she had spoken to him, but he couldn’t remember exactly what she said.
“How I longed for days like this!” he said.
“But now we have to eat! You’re so comical!” She laughed indulgently when he sat her on the sofa. “A man must be a little brutal sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be an uncontrolled brutality. It should be a little wild…without restraint. You seem to be an immature man or a mature child,” she said.
“Right! A mature child. And you, do you remember your childhood?”
“My childhood!” she said a little pathetically. “How much time has passed since then! It seems to me it was so many years ago. So long ago! What kind of childhood did I have? I’ll never forget it!”
“So it was pleasant?”
“Yes, of course,” she said with shining eyes. “I had a happy childhood I’ll never forget!”
Her answer surprised him. He expected her to tell him of a miserable childhood. After all, she told him she was orphaned as a child, so how could it have been a happy time?
“Do you remember your parents?”
“Of course!” She sighed deeply. “Maybe they’re still alive, somewhere. Yes, I’m sure they’re alive, and I hope I’ll see them again. I must see them once more… I must!”
“I don’t under
stand… Didn’t they die when you were a child?”
She was silent. She lay there with closed eyes and remained silent.
“How will you be able to see them again? How?” He didn’t leave her alone. “Did you lie to me?”
She still didn’t answer him.
“Why don’t you answer? You surprise me more and more.”
“You’re still so full of curiosity,” she whispered, with her eyes closed.
“As your future husband, I’m entitled to know everything, and I want to know everything, understand?”
“As my future husband!” She opened her eyes. “Ahh, no, I don’t know if you’ll be my husband… I’m not sure!”
“No?”
“No, no, no!” She laughed.
He looked at her with amazement and found it difficult to discern which words were true, especially since she said everything with a teasing laugh, but he was convinced she intended to trap him in her net and control him completely, the work of a devil. If she left him suddenly, it would be a terrible tragedy for him. Now it was clear to him that he loved her very much, and perhaps all that was strange and surprising in her made him love her even more.
She’s very clever, he deduced, and cunning, and yet she has so much charm and womanly grace. She was blessed with the unusual ability to attract men and enslave them, but there was no doubt in his mind that she was hiding something, and he decided to question her as a lawyer would a witness to wring out the truth.
“I understand,” he said provocatively after a short time, “that you are sorry now, after all that has happened to you, that you left your parents without seeing them, but I’m not certain they are still alive. After all, the Nazis slaughtered all the Jews, even in the Ukraine, and if they succeeded in escaping and are still alive, we’ll do all we can to help them with money and food packages. They’ll probably be very happy to know their daughter survived and is in America.”
“But… But…” she stammered, “besides my parents, there was another person who was even dearer to me.”
“Someone dearer to you than your parents?” he asked lightly.
“Oh, yes. A young man whom I’ll never forget…never!”