by Helen Burko
Jacob became even angrier. “Have you forgotten, Rachel, that we have to go to Warsaw this evening? We’re already very late!”
She understood his intentions and began to make herself ready for the trip. She hoped that Bunin would take the hint and leave, but he didn’t and sat at the table and demanded some vodka so he could drink a toast to the couple before he left.
“Bring some vodka!”
“We don’t have any vodka in the house.” Rachel laughed.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find some vodka.” He went into the kitchen and found some wine. Rachel hurried after him and tried to take the bottle away from him.
“Oh, I understand. You were keeping this for somebody else.” He pretended to be angry. “All right!” He didn’t let go of the bottle but held it and put both his hands around Rachel’s waist and squeezed so strongly that she shrieked.
“You’re a bully!” she cried, and with force succeeded in getting away from him. She stood aside and watched him open the bottle. Bunin didn’t pay attention to Jacob’s anger that increased every minute and poured out the wine into the glasses.
“Forgive me for intruding. I raise my glass in honor of Rachel!” He raised the glass with one hand and drank while holding onto the bottle with the other hand.
They were all silent. A shadow of hidden anger passed over Rachel’s face. Marta came into the kitchen and pretended she didn’t see or hear anything and talked under her breath to Kitzie, as was her habit.
“Well, Rachel, another toast to life! To our friendship! To all of us!” Bunin called out gaily and downed the third glass. After that, he tried to make Rachel drink a toast with him. To Jacob’s surprise, she took a glass and said laughingly, “To the Red Army!”
“Bravo! Bravo!” Bunin yelled and turned to Jacob. “What about you?”
Jacob just gave him an angry look.
“If you don’t want to drink, don’t!” And he turned again to Rachel. “But we’ll have another glass! This is good wine, by God!”
When Jacob saw that Rachel was busy with Bunin, he stormed out, saying he had to get ready, but when he saw that Rachel remained in the kitchen, he returned in time to see Rachel raising another glass to her lips.
“I don’t permit you to drink so much, you hear me!” He took the glass away and set it on the table so hard that it hit the other glasses, which overturned and sprayed wine on the table and on Bunin’s uniform.
Bunin stood up, incensed. “Why don’t you let her drink a glass of wine, huh?”
“That’s none of your business!” Jacob yelled at Bunin without considering what the result might be.
Rachel tried to intercede in the fight she knew was brewing, but she was too late. Bunin suddenly slapped Jacob so hard in the face that Jacob fell back and bumped into a chair that almost overturned. Rachel put her arms around Bunin and pleaded with him to calm down. Jacob ran to his room and brought back two little statues that he threw at Bunin. Bunin attacked him again, but Jacob was ready for him and threw a chair at him. The chair hit him, and he was unsteady on his feet. The confusion grew.
Marta panicked and cried out, “Oh, Jesus save us! Holy Mother of God!”
When Kitzie saw all the bedlam, he jumped out of Marta’s arms and hid under the cupboard.
Marta and Rachel, with great effort, succeeded in dragging and pushing Jacob into the nearest room and locking him there. Rachel tried again to calm Bunin, who by now was completely out of his mind and yelled, “That’s what he is, huh? A big hero, huh?”
“Please, calm down!” Rachel put her arms around his neck.
When Bunin felt Rachel so near to him, he calmed down and grinned. “Don’t be frightened, Rachel. I won’t kill him. I know that straw hero of yours wouldn’t dare to lift a hand against a Russian officer!”
“Please, go home,” she begged. “You’re drunk. Go home!”
“I’ll go home when I want to!” he said aggressively and looked at his stained uniform.
With a white napkin that she wetted, Rachel tried to take out the wine stain. “It’s nothing. There’s nothing to regret. Go home!”
“Nonsense!” He combed his hair with his fingers. “I don’t regret anything!”
It took a long time for Rachel to finally persuade him to go home. When he left, the silence was oppressive, torturous.
When Rachel finally convinced Jacob that his behavior had been hasty and undiplomatic, they went to bed.
“Believe me, I hate him no less than you do, but if you had pretended you didn’t know anything of what happened between us, if you honored him with a little something to drink and I danced with him a little, he would have left. I know what the Russians are like more than you do. With hate and anger, you can’t do anything with them, especially since you know he’s your most dangerous enemy.”
“He had some nerve coming here after he tried to rape you!”
“He’s a soldier, an office…” Rachel laughed. “…and you have to make allowances.”
“I would have liked to teach him how to behave honorably.”
“It wouldn’t have helped, and there would have been no end to the whole business. Even now, I’m not sure he won’t return. I know, liebling, that you’re as strong as he is, but there’s no logic to it. And, anyway, we’ll be leaving soon.”
Jacob remained silent. Something unclear bothered him, and secretly, he was angry at her. If she hadn’t gone with Bunin to Warsaw, he wouldn’t have come here. But Jacob didn’t reveal his accusations and didn’t blame her out loud; he just decided to leave Otvotsk as soon as possible.
The silence was broken in the early morning by another incident, no less unpleasant than the first, and it more than ever caused Jacob to decide to hurry the trip he had postponed because of the good mood they had been in after the wedding.
The night before, they heard talking in Marta’s room, and they understood that Watzek had returned to visit his mother. They were surprised they hadn’t heard him enter. Lately, he’d been visiting his mother frequently. Marta’s absences and the secret visits of her son continued to puzzle them.
As they lay in bed, they heard a knock on the door.
“The Russian officer,” she shrieked. “I’m sure it’s him!”
“Don’t be afraid,” he comforted her. “I’ll take care of him!”
They heard Marta praying. “Jesus save us… Mother of God!”
Marta burst into their room without knocking and shouted, “It’s the Russian officer again! What will be now, what will be?”
“Open up!” they heard someone order loudly.
“Don’t be frightened, Pani Marta.” Jacob tried to calm her and began to dress hurriedly.
The knocking changed. Marta went to the door and asked, “Who’s that knocking on our door in the middle of the night?”
“Open up! Police!”
The tension left Jacob and Rachel but increased for Marta. “Oh, Jesus save us… Mother of God!” she continued to wail. “I’ll be right there—I have to dress,” she muttered with trembling lips. She went back to the kitchen and whispered something to Watzek, who entered Jacob’s room.
“Please hide me… Please, I beg of you!”
Jacob was surprised but understood his suspicions about Watzek’s identity must have been right. “You’re afraid of the police?” he asked.
“I… I…” he stammered, bewildered and frightened even more.
Rachel understood also, and since as Jacob’s wife she was in no danger, she tried to help him. “Jump out of the window!” she suggested. “Jump!”
“They’ve surrounded the house,” he said. “They’ll see me and shoot me on sight. Please! I’ll pretend I’m sick. Just let me get into your bed. Tell them I’m a friend of yours and that I’m sick…sick!”
“He really is sick!” said Jacob to Rachel and took her out of the room.
Marta, shaking all over, ran to the room for a minute and then opened the door. All at once, the house was full of policemen and secret agents i
n plain clothes accompanied by dogs. When Kitzie saw them, his eyes glowed like a tiger’s. A dog wanted to run after the cat, but the man held it and chased the cat out. Kitzie didn’t stop wailing.
“Oh, Jesus save us! Holy Mother of God, Saint Nicholas!” cried Marta, frightened and bewildered.
“Where is your son?” demanded the policeman. “We followed him, and we know he came here to sleep.”
The rest of the policemen and the men with the dogs scattered and began to search the rooms thoroughly.
A dog and two men entered Jacob’s room, and the dog ran to the closet and clawed at the door. The police demanded the key from Marta, but she stood there, frozen and pale with trembling lips, whispering, “Oh, God save us! Our Savior! Holy Mother of God!”
The people have sinned, thought Jacob at that moment, but the Savior won’t forgive them and have pity on them.
When they saw that Marta was not going to open the door, the men broke open the closet and dragged a white-faced Watzek out from between the clothes. Marta went down on her knees before them and cried, crossed herself, and pleaded with them. “Have pity! What harm has he done to you? Leave him alone!”
“Get up!” said one of the men. “You know very well what your son did when the Nazis were here.”
In the meantime, one of the men, searching the rooms, had found the cap of the Nazi officer. “Whose splendid cap is this?” he asked Watzek, who was looking at the floor as he couldn’t stand to see his mother groveling before them. When Watzek didn’t answer, he said to the others, “Search the place again!”
The policemen spread all over the house again, and two of them began to take Watzek out to the waiting police car.
“I won’t leave him! I won’t let you take him!” sobbed Marta as she held on to her son’s feet.
“You should have stopped him when he volunteered to help the Gestapo kill innocent people! What you have sowed, you can reap now! As you educated him, so did he behave!”
“My son is innocent! He’s innocent!” she moaned and wouldn’t let go of her son’s feet. Watzek said nothing.
The policemen returned holding two rifles and three pistols covered with dirt.
“We found these in the forest,” said a policeman, “thanks to the sense of smell my dog has.” He stroked the head of the dog near him.
“Splendid!” said the head of the group. “Good work!” He made a gesture to the men to unclasp Marta’s hands and take away her son.
After the policemen left with Watzek, the oppressive silence returned, the kind of silence that reigns when they take out a body from a house of mourning. Marta remained on the floor and continued to moan. Jacob looked at her and whispered to Rachel, “More than one mother crouched like this at the feet of a Watzek and begged them not to kill her child, but what is the use of this senseless murder on both sides?”
Rachel stood there, pale and silent. Her eyes rested on Marta with pity, and she brought her some water.
“Drink, Pani Marta!”
At first Marta wouldn’t move, but at last she sat up, drank the water, and wetted her forehead. Her appearance was horrible. Her wrinkles had deepened; her hair was disheveled. She sat there like someone in mourning and didn’t cease her weeping and sighing. Her dress had come undone, and her shriveled breasts showed, but she didn’t even try to cover them. At this moment, nothing mattered to her but her son who had been taken away from her by the police.
“What will I do now? How much a mother suffers until her son is grown. The Lord Jesus and the Holy Mother are witnesses to how I talked to him, how much I pleaded with him. He’s to blame for it all, his father, ‘the wise one,’ my stubborn husband… Oh, how much tragedy! How much suffering! How have I sinned? What are my sins that God is now torturing me without pity?”
She seemed like a living corpse. Her eyes looked shrunken, her nose had thinned, and she lay on the floor and wailed.
Jacob wanted to comfort her as his compassion for her was great, and he exchanged glances with Rachel and said to her quietly, “Yes, why is the mother to blame? Even the mother of a man in the Gestapo.”
Rachel remained silent, and Jacob continued. “Her husband and older son probably fell into the hands of the avenging Poles. From her words, I conclude her husband was the main ‘educator’ of her favorite son. She didn’t have any control over him.”
Rachel still didn’t respond, just glanced at Marta and went into her room. Jacob followed her.
After a while, Marta rose and dragged herself into her room while muttering broken, indistinct words.
After a few more minutes of silence, Jacob asked Rachel, “Why don’t you respond to what I say?”
“I have nothing to say,” she replied in a serious tone. “It made a very strong impression on me.”
“Yes, I am very sorry for her, too. Now I understand why she received us so warmly and was so good to us. She wanted to take their attention away from her son. Now it’s clear where she spent her days and why she always reminded us that Jesus is compassionate and forgiving.”
They both sat there silently. They could still hear Marta crying in her room.
“A fateful day we had,” said Rachel. “We have to leave here quickly.”
Jacob lit a cigarette.
“Give me a cigarette too and come to bed, liebling,” she murmured with a wry smile. “Oh, I’m so tired of all this!”
She went over to Jacob who continued to sit in the chair, sat on his knees, snuggled up to him like a small helpless child, and said impishly, “Quick, give me a cigarette!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The ship Europa was approaching the New York harbor. The sight of land excited all the passengers and made them impatient. The ocean didn’t charm them anymore, and there was a strong desire to be home, among family and friends. This yearning was strongest among the refugees, those freed from the concentration camps after years of Nazi torture, who had succeeded in reaching America, brought here by a relative or with the help of HIAS.
Most impatient was Jacob, who stood on the deck leaning against the railing, his arm around Rachel and his eyes fixed on the approaching harbor.
“I can easily understand how Columbus felt when he saw the new land after weeks of sailing on the ocean,” he said to Rachel without taking his eyes off the harbor.
“Yes, I can imagine.” Rachel smiled pensively.
“I find it hard to believe I’ll be home soon!” Jacob held Rachel tighter.
“Yes, home!” Rachel whispered more to herself than to him while gazing at the wondrous sight coming closer.
He didn’t hear her whisper, which drifted off to sea.
“Finally, our dreams are coming true! Who would have believed it? What I have seen will never be erased from my memory. Only now can I really value the meaning of freedom.”
“That’s understandable.”
When he noticed she was responding to his enthusiastic words with short phrases, he kept quiet. They both gazed in the same direction and listened to the sound of the ship that was slowly taking them to the promised, longed-for shore.
Jacob again felt he had to express his feelings, and after a short silence, he said, “I feel like someone who has escaped from an inferno by the skin of his teeth.”
“Right! An inferno that is still blazing.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I think so!”
Again they stood silently and looked at the parting water that churned around the ship; it matched Rachel’s churning thoughts. Her imagination carried her back to all she had experienced since she left her carefree childhood.
Looking at the water brought back faces that passed through her mind, confused and disordered. Now she saw her Karl riding on a horse, laughing. She was riding and following him, and they were both smiling and happy. Now she saw a barbed wire fence…shaven heads…bombers…bunkers…forests and fields.
Now the waves took on the sturdy form of a man. Oh, she knew him—Yagorov; his sweaty for
elock swayed with the waves. She felt him tearing off her clothes… She fought and escaped…
Suddenly she saw rows of soldiers marching past, polished boots moving in step, flags with the Nazi cross, threatening tanks rolling past, arms raised and voices yelling, “Heil! Heil!”
Now again…a man’s strong arms. Yes, that was the Uzbak, Aysayev. She was lying there, half-nude, and he was laughing a drunken, conceited laugh.
Now she saw herself dancing the hopak. Someone was shouting at her: “Mashka, Mashinka, my beauty. Faster, faster!”
The ocean waves rolled on and she saw herself riding in an army jeep in a forest, and then standing there with, suddenly, a Russian officer! Ahh, she knew him well! It’s Major Nikrasov, Yagorov’s good friend. She’s in a panic… How did she get here? Her hands move quickly, and she whips out a gun and shoots the officer. He falls, wounded. She flees, and suddenly she sees Matvey Bunin and the little dog, Goebbels… Oh, Goebbels!
Jacob roused her from her maelstrom of memories.
“Look, darling, how the sun kisses the tranquil waters! Isn’t that a wonderful sight? I think I have never seen such a mixture of colors! When I sailed for Europe, I saw a sunset with a completely different set of eyes, and today…”
“Of course… Of course…” she repeated mechanically.
It seemed she hadn’t even heard his words. She’d returned to her inner world, to the recollection of her young stormy days.
She was leaning on the railing of the ship, and her eyes were glued to the water as if she were still searching for the people in her soaring imagination. The wind played with her blond curls shining golden in the sunset. The blue waters were reflected in her blue eyes, which made her even more breathtaking to Jacob and the other passengers who gazed at her at every opportunity.
Jacob wasn’t satiated yet with her beauty. He was content that this charming, exquisite young woman belonged only to him, and yet, as the ship neared the harbor, he became saddened. He knew no one would be meeting them at the dock because he hadn’t written the exact date of arrival. In his last letter, he had written, “Don’t write anymore. I’m coming, but I don’t know the exact date of arrival.”