Jewels and Ashes

by Arnold Zable

  It is obvious where he is from, and it has been from the beginning. Now he confesses, with embarrassment. He was born in Germany, soon after the War. His story tumbles out quickly, in staccato-like whispers, as if he wants to tell it before I can judge him. I have to strain to hear him. His father had been a soldier during the War. ‘What did you do, father, during the War?’ And year after year, the same answer. ‘I was a soldier. I did my duty. There is no more to be said.’ But the son had stumbled upon clues, documents, photos. He had made enquiries, talked to family acquaintances, and had pieced it together. Father had been an SS man. He had served in Poland. He had worked in Auschwitz. ‘What did you do, father?’ The questions became more insistent. The answers were always the same. ‘I did my duty. I was a soldier. I had orders.’

  ‘If only he would have admitted it. That would have been at least something. And mother. Always a hausfrau. She had seen nothing, known nothing. Merely maintained a household while her husband was away on duty, for the Fatherland. I grew up in a house of denials and secrets.’

  The son atones for the father. He goes on a journey to Israel. He lives in Jerusalem for two years and works among the elderly, as a nurse’s aide. Since then, for several years now, he has journeyed to Auschwitz with a group he has formed — the sons and daughters of former SS men. Together they make the annual pilgrimage to atone for the crimes of their elders: ‘I cannot comprehend how an Auschwitz could have existed. It eludes me, constantly. But I will continue to work there. We must maintain it for everyone to see what our elders once did.’

  We keep talking in the courtyard, long after the others have gone. Feigl Wasserman, the caretaker of the Rema, has turned off the lights and is locking the synagogue doors. ‘I cannot comprehend how they could have committed such deeds’, Werner muses, as if conducting aloud an inner dialogue he has pursued for years. ‘But in the work, in my travels throughout Poland, I escape my father’s cold silence, my mother’s pursed lips and, for a while at least, I am free of the shadow that has clung to me since birth.’

  Feigl Wasserman ushers us through the arched gate into Szeroka Square. I shake hands with Werner, and he disappears into the darkness. From Moses unto Moses, there had never been such a Moses; and his shrine, within the walls of the Rema, stands enveloped in silence, mute witness to the shadows flitting through the crumbling tenements of Kazimierz and beyond, not so many miles from here, in a town called Oswiecim.

  Feigl Wasserman guides me from the synagogue. The moon is bloated, approaching its fullness, and in its light can be seen the names of streets glued to tenement walls on wooden plaques: Jakuba, Isaaka, Jozefa, Miodowa, Krakowska, legendary streets of Kazimierz, Jewish quarters since the fourteenth century; and at this hour, after the Shabbes service, families would have been assembling in their homes, about to eat the Shabbes meal.

  We enter an apartment block and ascend several flights of stairs. On the first- floor landing, on guard in front of an apartment, an emaciated dog barks and howls. His fury echoes along the corridors as we ascend to the higher floors. There are three sets of locks on Feigl’s apartment door. When it is finally opened, the Sabbath candles can be seen burning upon a table which stands just inside the entrance. We are home at last: Shabbat Shalom.

  The royal city of Krakow is veiled in mist and rain, a steady downpour which persists for many hours. The streets of Kazimierz are overflowing. The gates to the Krakow Jewish cemetery are locked. Nearby stands a three-storey brick building. I climb the stairs to the first landing. Windows overlook the graveyard. Ivies, creepers, wild grass, and tombstones seem entangled in a single dripping mass.

  Ascending the stairs is an old man. His face is yellowed, the pallor of parchment, his bullish neck sunken between the shoulders. His eyes are squinting as he draws closer, scrutinising me with suspicion. My Yiddish greeting reassures him somewhat, although he keeps his distance as we talk.

  I am never quite sure, during this first encounter, whether he is playing a game of some sort, or if he is indeed, as he claims, the caretaker of this burial ground. ‘My name is not important’, he insists. ‘It is enough that I am alive. In my life I have had more luck than joy! He is an enigmatic creature, the old man with the waxen face, and reveals only carefully chosen glimpses of himself. Suddenly he grabs my hand and pulls it to his cheeks. ‘Here! Over the left eye! Can you feel the empty space? Beneath the skin? There are no bones there. And here, at the back of my jaw, there are pieces missing. In my life I have had more luck than joy.’

  After indicating that he lives in an apartment on this floor, the old man leads me downstairs to a back door which opens directly onto the cemetery. I offer to share my umbrella. ‘It’s not necessary’, he says scornfully. ‘I am an old soldier. I was for many years in the Soviet army. We fought in mud, snow, and bitter frosts. I don’t need umbrellas. The heavens are merely spitting on us.’

  On the ground floor there is a large hall in which bodies are prepared for burial. Passages from the scriptures circle the upper reaches of the walls. ‘This is where we all come when all is said and done’, mutters the old soldier. ‘Our bodies are stripped, cleaned, tidied up, carried through the door and, so, it is over; we become mere memory. The memory fades and is transformed into history. In time the history is distorted, denied, impossible to believe, and we are reduced to absolutely nothing, zero, not even a figment of the imagination.’

  The caretaker leads me over mud-splattered paths to a segment of the cemetery wall. On it can be seen an extensive mosaic, pieced together by survivors from fragments of marble and granite, with cracked names and epitaphs — the remains of desecrated tombs which the Nazis had intended to use in building roads. ‘On this wall you see the whole meshugas’, claims the old soldier. ‘We spend our lives breaking each other’s bones; then we try to patch up the mess. I too was patched up. I left Krakow in 1939, fled to Russia, joined the army, drove tanks, struck a mine, and awoke on an operating table in Moscow. The best doctors worked on me. They assembled the bones, a piece here, a piece there. I am like this mosaic. Yet I was the lucky one. I left Krakow a community of 69 000 Yidn, returned six years later with half a face, and was greeted by one huge burial ground. In my life I have had more luck than joy.’

  Oblivious to the rain, the old soldier continues to spin tales spiced with sarcasm and spite, although as he talks a tinge of warmth, a fatherly tone, creeps into his voice. Yet he remains guarded about his name. ‘I am a mosaic’, he says. ‘Take a letter here, another there, and you have my name. If you wish, you can call me “der vant”. And what can one do with a wall? It provides protection, and to your enemies you can say, “Go beat your head against the wall!”‘

  A middle-aged couple carrying yellow chrysanthemums walk along the flooded paths of the cemetery. They stop by a grave and set to work. Weeds are removed, the stone wiped clean of dust, the marble surface polished. Oil lamps are lit and arranged with flowers by the base of the tomb. A pair of hands held up in a gesture of blessing, engraved on the headstone, indicates that here lies a descendant of Cohanim, the priestly caste.

  Today is the tenth anniversary of David Schaffner’s death and, by chance, I have become a participant in the occasion. His son Henry claims it is no coincidence that we have met at this time. He sees life as a series of interrelated events, all of which have significance against a wider scheme of things. ‘There is no random chance’, he claims, as he tends David’s grave, ‘but patterns: some evil, others beautiful. The goal of life is to intuit beyond the apparent chaos an infinite order of things, a higher intelligence at work.’

  Henry’s flat is on the Royal Way, in Ulitza Grodzka. The building is six-hundred-years old and stands near Rynek Glowny, the mediaeval market-square that occupies the centre of the walled city. Henry and his Polish wife live in two small rooms. Everywhere there are clocks, piles of clothing, and short-wave radio equipment. The clothes are repaired by Mrs Schaffner to augment her husband’s sickness pension. The clocks sit on tables, mantelp
ieces, bookshelves and cupboards. Others hang on walls, while grandfather clocks squat on the floor. On the hour, every hour, bells chime, cuckoos fly out of cages, trumpets blow, and drums beat. One clock, disguised as a painting of an idyllic rural scene, comes to life with chimes synchronised to the movement of buckets being drawn from a well by village women.

  Clocks are one of Henry’s two grand passions. He collects and restores them. He scours market-places, remote hamlets, antique shops, and will travel many miles to follow up the slightest rumour that a clock is languishing somewhere in an attic or barn. He has transported them in taxis, buses, trains, and on foot, back to the cramped apartment in Ulitza Grodzka. His father had been a clock-repairer and had passed on the skills to his only son. ‘Clocks are a constant reminder’, Henry affirms, ‘that there is a way to create order out of chaos. No matter how insane the world may seem at times, the chiming of a clock reminds the executioner, if only for a moment, that he too will one day be forced to move on.’

  Henry’s other great love is the short-wave radio which sits on the living-room table. It is a massive apparatus, always awake, crackling in the background, lights blinking a multitude of signals, the occasional voice filtering through with a call for ‘Hotel Sierra’, Henry’s radio code-name. He is in regular contact with operators in seventeen European countries. They send each other cards and letters. Many can be seen stacked high on the mantelpieces, between clocks. ‘Hotel Sierra’ shows me a card he has received this very day from Viking Radio in the Shetland Islands. They had made contact for the first time a fortnight ago. The card is inscribed with the motto: ‘Vikings raise the wind on the air’, and beneath is printed their anthem:

  On distant seas their dragon prows

  Went gleaming outward bound.

  Stormclouds were their banners;

  Their music, ocean sound.

  The radio card of ‘Hotel Sierra’ features a drawing of Krakow’s walled city, against a background of red and white, Poland’s national colours, inscribed with the motto: ‘Though we are miles apart we are not strangers, but friends who have never met.’

  Today is the tenth anniversary of the death of David Schaffner, who lies buried beneath a vase of yellow chrysanthemums. In the kitchen of a six-hundred-year-old apartment on the Royal Way, near the heart of the walled city, I listen to the bare outlines of his life. story, told between the chiming of countless clocks and the faint voices of radio operators from all corners of the continent.

  David was born in Krakow in the last decade of the nineteenth century. During the First World War he fought in the Polish army. Taken prisoner, he was sent by the Russians to Siberia. On his return he left his native city and settled in Germany. It would be safer there, he believed, far from anti-Jewish pogroms that had flared up in Poland at war’s end.

  His son Henry was born in Germany fifty years ago. During the Kristallnacht pogrom, on November 9, 1938, Nazi stormtroopers broke into the Schaffner home. They rampaged, looted, and overturned David’s extensive collection of antique clocks. ‘Time stopped’, says Henry, ‘and for the next seven years we were continually on the run, seeking refuge, a place to hide.’

  After deportation from Germany the family made their way back to Krakow. Within three months, the Nazis had invaded the city. When the Jews of Krakow were driven from their ancient quarters in Kazimierz and herded into a ghetto on the opposite banks of the Vistula, David urged his wife and son to escape. They hid in a village not far from the city. With the help of local peasants they survived.

  David Schaffner was shunted from camp to camp. Somewhere within that vast network of terror, doctors of the Reich used him in their experiments. They pulled apart his immune system as one would take apart an antique clock. But they were not so concerned with reassembling the parts.

  At war’s end the Schaffhers were among the few Krakow Jewish families to return. David remained a sick man, his constitution irretrievably broken. He passed his last years silently immersed in restoring clocks. ‘It is no coincidence we met today’, insists Henry. As a result you are recording my father’s story. Every being craves recognition, someone to bear witness. Only then can a soul be finally put to rest.’

  ‘Hotel Sierra’, keeper of clocks and guardian of the airwaves, one of the last members of the oldest Jewish community in Poland, rides the waves of time and space in a landlocked apartment on the Royal Way. He receives messages from distant kingdoms, restores timepieces, and creates order out of chaos. ‘This is the least I can do to combat evil forces’, he claims. ‘Heed the passage of time, listen carefully to a story, a cry for help, and restore that which has been damaged or broken.’

  Feigl Wasserman is small and rotund. Her greying hair remains strong, and is tied in a series of buns which sweep upwards to a rounded summit. She ties her hair as she does everything else — with precision, care, and a sense of symmetry. As caretaker of the Rema she keeps watch over its dwindling congregation with a stern eye. ‘They are useless’, she declares. ‘They cannot do anything by themselves. They need a mother to look after them.’ She dusts off their coats, adjusts their ties, scolds and fusses and, at closing time, bundles them out of the synagogue.

  Between chores she sits in the courtyard and chats to tourists who come to see the tomb of Moses Isserles. In return for advice and information she receives tips. American dollars, in particular, are most welcome. The visitors relieve her isolation and she is bemused by them, especially travellers such as myself. ‘What are you looking for?’, she asks. ‘You think you can bring the dead back to life?’

  In the evenings I return to her apartment. On the kitchen table stand rows of candles which she makes for synagogue services. When she retires to bed she moves the telephone to within arm’s length. Calls from her two children are always imminent. There is a daughter in Israel, a son in Russia. She often talks about her grandchildren, shows me photos, describes their many virtues. Except for Shabbes eve she remains at home every evening, alone, awaiting the next call.

  ‘Why don’t you join them?’, I ask her. ‘And who would look after my husband’s grave?’, she replies, removing the crumbs from the table. When there is absolutely nothing left to clean or dust, she sits by the telephone and knits. ‘He was a pious man, my second husband’, says Feigl. Fifteen years ago he was invited by the Krakow congregation to become the sexton and cantor of the Rema. With their two children grown up and married, Feigl and her husband moved from their native Russia and took up the post in Krakow. And the first husband? That is another story altogether; to tell it, we need a cup of tea, several slices of almond cake and, if you wish, a glass or two of vodka.

  The year is 1941. In a village somewhere within that vastness called the Red Empire, a man says farewell to his wife and one-year-old daughter. He sets off with his Red Army unit and vanishes from their lives. As the Nazis advance into Russia, the village is razed. The woman and her daughter move from town to town, always one step ahead of advancing armies. To recount the details of that epic journey would take many hours. Let us just say they survived but, despite Feigl’s many attempts to locate him, it seemed as if her husband had disappeared without trace.

  In 1950 he abrupdy reappeared. He had been badly wounded, he explained. Shrapnel had lodged in his lungs. For many years he had been dangerously ill: hospitalised, listless, without any interest in life. Finally he had regained enough will to insist that, with whatever strength remained, he would search for his wife and child. And you think this story is unusual?’, Feigl adds with a shrug. And indeed it now seems I have been listening for months to one common tale, with slight variations, a common chorus from which individual voices emerge to take centre stage for a moment, before retreating back to the wings.

  ‘We were reunited for a mere ten months’, continues Feigl. ‘His lungs were on fire until the day he died. I was seven months pregnant at the time. It was only after I raised my children that I remarried. And when my second husband died, two years ago, I decided: enough, no
more wandering, this is where I will end my days.’

  Her knitting needles move fast. A pattern emerges. There is a touch of steel in Feigl Wasserman. ‘It is not wise to dwell too much upon the past’, she warns me. ‘Do your job and stay one step ahead of trouble.’ She is sharp, shrewd, just a touch angry, extremely wary, and very kind, in a motherly fashion. The keeper of the Rema, protector of the tomb of Moses Isserles, Feigl Wasserman is a wise and irritable babushka, mother of the last congregation of Krakow Jewry. ‘Do not dwell too much upon the past’, she insists. ‘It will be of no practical use.’

  On the wall there hangs a portrait of Jessica and Shylock, the merchant of Venice. His face is suffused with fatherly love; Jessica is radiant. Monika stands in front of the painting and stares at it intently. Her eyes are large and wide open. They blaze with such intensity that other features emerge slowly, as if advancing from the shadows. She is plump and wears a cotton dress with fading floral patterns. It hangs down loosely to her ankles and verges on shabbiness. Her face is a balloon, the cheeks tinted with rose patches which flare into fiery blotches when she becomes excited. At moments she relaxes into a childlike smile, and the permanent dimples in her cheeks deepen into rounded troughs. But most of the time she remains taut, alert, with her eyes taking on an existence of their own as they flit nervously between fear and extravagant hope.

  I am never quite sure whether the story she is telling is true or the fantastic fabrication of a disintegrating mind. It does not seem to matter either way. The core of what she is recounting burns with something that extends beyond fact and fantasy. It is the myth by which she lives, the obsession which induced her to study the Hebrew language and scriptures, and to acquire a passion for a people who had almost vanished from the soil of her native land. Her passion had been disciplined into a vocation and had provided her with this temporary niche in life as an assistant in the Krakow Jewish museum.