The Covenant

by Ragen, Naomi

  He had been a student of literature when the war broke out. Like her, he had joined the Polish underground. He had survived the war in the forests, until the Russians picked him up and sent him to a prison camp. With no paper or pens, he began to write his experiences on pieces of wood, circulating them among the other prisoners, organizing them to demand better food and more humane treatment.

  Eventually, they’d let him go.

  Despite the secret police who controlled the press, Jozef wrote uncensored pieces that he circulated fearlessly She was afraid. After all she’d suffered . . . but when he asked her to marry him, to join her life with his, she knew she could not say no.

  They were married in church. Leah and Esther and Ariana had sent telegrams and gifts. They’d rented a small flat in Krakow.

  Jozef continued to work: he published social criticism, masking it in fairy tales and allegories. Soon, the secret police began to hound their steps. So they took their firstborn, Janusz, and moved away from the city, to the Sudety Mountains in a place called Gorzanow. It was a place emptied of deported Germans and filled with Poles uprooted and transferred from their homes in areas that the Soviets meant to annex to the Ukraine.

  With generous help from Esther, who was doing better than ever, they bought a little piece of farmland on a hill right near a lovely river. Jozef, the journalist, the intellectual, was going to be a farmer. Planting potatoes, he said, was better than planting lies in people’s heads.

  She remembered those days—milking and plowing, pulling fresh vegetables from the earth. And the long, starlit nights, plotting their escape back to civilization. Often now her mind went back to those sunsets, watching her husband and son horseback riding through the darkening fields as they made their way home to the warm, lamplit house, filled with the scents of baking raisin bread, fresh pierogy, and beef and barley soup. It had taken her decades to realize that they had been the happiest years of her life.

  But Jozef had to return to Krakow. He couldn’t sit back idly, he said, in a Poland where the only places one could speak the truth were church, cemetery and courtroom.

  Those years back in Krakow . . . writing the secret monthly periodicals, setting up the secret libraries. And then the knocks on the door in the middle of the night, the secret police, the fake trials, the years in prison. The lonely nights, bringing up Janusz on her own.

  When they finally let Jozef go, his huge body was gaunt, and his hair had turned ash gray. It didn’t stop him. In 1965, he became one of the authors of the “letter of 34” in which writers and scientists protested censorship to Prime Minister Cyrankiewicz. And five years later, the police took Janusz, then a freshman at the University of Warsaw, accusing him of meeting with fellow students, discussing political and social problems, and distributing texts. She had no doubt it was true.

  The handwriting was on the wall. In 1970, two weeks before Christmas, when price increases finally sent thousands of workers of the Gdansk shipyard out into the streets shouting: “Bread!” and “The press is lying!” the army opened fire. One of the first to fall was Jozef.

  She and Janusz buried him in the mountains overlooking their fields.

  When Esther called with the terrible news about Elise’s family, suggesting that Milos go to Israel, she had hesitated. It was enough, she told herself. Enough sacrifice. Enough risk. She wanted him to enjoy life, all the new freedoms. To study and travel and go to parties . . . All the things she and Jozef and Janusz had struggled so hard to give him. She wanted him to be part of a new world, a shining new millennium in which personal sacrifice for basic human freedoms were no longer demanded; where a man had life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness handed to him simply by virtue of being born. Besides, she had serious doubts whether or not he’d agree. He’d always seemed so lighthearted, playing his English rock music, riding his motorcycle, going to movies and concerts.

  But Leah was right: the battle had begun all over again. One could not sit on the sidelines.

  “Seek justice and pursue it,” the Bible said. You might not find it in your lifetime, but you had to live your life chasing it down. You could never make your peace with anything less.

  She was glad Milos understood this. But as she studied the silent phone willing it to ring, she couldn’t help but wish that the pursuit of justice didn’t always have to be so dangerous.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem

  Thursday, May 9, 2002

  2:00 A.M.

  A SUDDEN SENSE of thirst woke her. Elise wet her parched lips with her tongue. “Jon?” she whispered, reaching out for his body at the other end of the bed.

  “Darling,” she heard. But it wasn’t Jon. It was an old woman.

  “Bubbee?” Her voice came out hoarse, cracked.

  Dry, she thought. My tongue, my throat, my brain, my body. Scorched and dry. Like the pages of a newspaper used to start a fire blazing in the fireplace: black leaves that only gave the appearance of solidity, the illusion of wholeness. The minute you touched them, they fell apart, disintegrating into a million pieces.

  “Thirsty,” she managed.

  “Come, lift your head. Take a drink. Of course you are, now, drink my love, my lovely Elise.” She tried to lift her head to grasp the straw that seemed suddenly so very desirable. Her whole body ached to wrap her lips around it, to drain the cup. But the moment she moved, her body sent a shock wave of pain so powerful she felt her legs tremble. She held her stomach, gasping.

  It was then that she remembered.

  “My baby!” she wept.

  “Elise, it’s a boy! A beautiful little boy. It’s alive, Elise, Elise. Come have a little drink. You have to be strong for him, for your baby. Soon you’ll go to see him. Elise, Elise,” Leah crooned, her heart fuller than anyone’s had a right to be, she thought.

  Elise felt her grandmother’s hand slip behind her neck, raising her head up. She drank in huge, almost pauseless gulps, draining the cup. It tasted like plastic, like hospitals. She pulled her body up in small increments, resting after each tiny, pain-filled motion. When she finally reached a sitting position, she took a deep breath, looking around the room.

  It was filled with flowers: White and yellow daisies, red and pink and yellow roses, bunches of chrysanthemums of every hue, waving orange plumes of the birds-of-paradise, anemones, tulips, baby’s breath. “How? Who?”

  “They haven’t stopped arriving. The hall is full of them. The hospital is full. Everyone in the country. Strangers, politicians. Your grocer, all your friends. And from Esther, Maria and Ariana. And that’s not all: they are getting on a plane. Coming to see you.”

  “Really? All your bloc shvesters? The whole Covenant?” It had been years. And then, as her eyes wandered from vase to vase, again she remembered. The baby. Her little boy. And liana. liana! And Jon! “Tell me.”

  Leah hesitated. “The doctor will come. I’ll get the doctor” She started to get up. Elise squeezed her hand almost painfully.

  “Tell me, Bubbee. For God’s sake, please!”

  She took her granddaughter’s pale hand into hers, careful not to disturb the white surgical tape that kept all the intravenous tubes attached to her veins. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Tell me about the baby.”

  “Elise, he was six weeks early. He weighs one kilo three hundred grams.”

  “God!”

  “He’s alive. He’s a fighter. The doctors say he has a good chance.”

  “You saw him?”

  Leah nodded. “A broocha on his kepeleh. Little shefelah. Little lamb . . . May God watch over him . . .”

  “I want to see him.”

  “Of course you do. Of course you do.” Leah patted her arm helplessly.

  “And Jon and liana . . .?”

  Leah shook her head and shrugged. “Nothing new.”

  Elise tried to move her legs. The pain was excruciating.

  “It’s the cesarean. The stitches. Everything is sti
ll raw. It’s only been a few hours. It will get better. You are all right. Nothing terrible. It will heal.”

  Elise felt her eyes well. “Why is God punishing me? What have I done to deserve this?”

  She looked at her granddaughter, startled. How many times had her husband Yossi, God rest his soul, asked this question?

  He too had been a survivor. A very religious cousin had fixed her up the same year she came to America. The truth was, she’d felt lonely among the Americans and Yossi had understood her. Too late she realized that unlike her, something inside him had died in the camps. Optimism? Joy? She didn’t know exactly. His vision of God had changed. It was a vision that frightened her.

  Such a didactic, uncompromising, unfeeling tyrant was Yossi’s God. He was constantly criticizing, keeping track if you ate something with the wrong rabbinical supervision; if you carried a tissue in your pocket when you went to shul; if you washed the floors thoroughly enough before Passover. The God who created sunsets and roses cared about a crumb left in the corner of the kitchen?! He’d never forget it, that crumb, never forgive you? she’d argue in vain.

  She couldn’t believe in Yossi’s God.

  Maybe Mendel, her son, had felt the same, it suddenly occurred to her. And he’d dealt with it by throwing away the skullcap, the fringed garments . . . escaping as fast as he could, making his home, “home on the range . . . where never is heard a discouraging word.” In the home he’d grown up in, all Mendel had ever heard from his father were discouraging words. He was always a good kid. Not rebellious. But at a certain point, it was enough. He didn’t want the dark suit, the narrow streets, the constant serving of an implacable deity that was impossible to please. He wanted something else. Yossi had never forgiven himself for Mendel’s desertion, or for Miriam’s death, viewing both as a personal punishment from God for his sins. He’d tried all the harder to please Him. That hadn’t made him an easy man to live with. So many stringencies he’d insisted on! Every week he and the rabbis figured out something else you weren’t allowed to enjoy. It gave them such pleasure.

  “I don’t believe in punishments coming down from Heaven, Elise. Sometimes people suffer because they make mistakes . . . They go shopping for a coat in a bad neighborhood. And sometimes, they suffer for no reason at all. Wasn’t that the whole point of the Book of Job?”

  “You’re right. I’ve failed Jon. Failed our baby. I didn’t keep him in long enough. It’s my fault.” She wept.

  Leah put her arms around her granddaughter’s young shoulders. “Don’t you dare blame yourself! There is a long list of people whose fault this is, but your name is not on it. Believe me.”

  “That reporter!!”

  “Don’t waste your time and strength on hating her. Let God deal with it. He always does, in His own time, and in His own way. The time we waste on hating, we could be using for loving. So, dry your tears. You have more important things to do. You have a baby that needs you.”

  “Yes, the baby . . .”

  “But first, you have to take care of yourself . . .”

  “I don’t care what happens to me anymore! I wish I was dead.”

  Leah’s face lost color. She put both hands on either side of Elise’s shoulders, looking into her face fiercely. “That’s for our enemies to wish for. For themselves and their children that they send out to murder and die. It’s not for us. Pray for life, Elise, for yourself, your husband, your two children. Pray to our God. Wish for life!”

  “Without Jon and my children, I don’t have a life.”

  “Yes,” Leah whispered. “Even then.”

  Elise looked up, in shock. “It isn’t human.”

  “Yes, it is the most human thing in the world,” she said quietly. “I know it’s hard to believe, but that’s what your God asks of you.”

  “How did you do it? How did all the people who went through the camps, who lost everyone—father, mother, sister, brother, husband, children—how did they manage to go on living? To remarry, have more children . . .? How?”

  “By loving life. And—in spite of everything—by loving God. By having enough faith to start over again and again; enough faith to risk having our hearts break all over again. That’s the true meaning of faith. It’s the deepest kind of heroism.”

  The two women sat there looking into each other’s eyes, listening to the silence.

  “Bubbee, I don’t know if my faith is strong enough. I’m no hero.”

  “Then depend on your love.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Leah sat down beside her on the bed, slipping her hand around Elise’s narrow, girlish shoulders. So young! she thought. So young. “Do you love your baby?”

  Elise’s eyes swam with tears as she nodded.

  “Then don’t torture yourself over things that are too big for you. Things you can’t change. Do the small things. Rest and eat so that your milk supply will be good. The baby needs his mother’s milk. It will make him stronger. He’ll grow faster . . .”

  Elise suddenly looked up, startled. “Yes,” she said. “I can do that.”

  “And visit him and touch him. A mother’s touch on the skin. It will help him grow and heal.”

  “Yes, yes. I can do that as well,” she thought, surprised she had not thought of it herself.

  “And then you must plan the bris.”

  Elise looked off into the distance. “Jon and I talked about it so many times. The circumcision ceremony in the Jerusalem hotel with the garden. The different kinds of fish and eggs, and pancakes, and waffles. Who we’d pick for the mohel. What kind of dress we’d buy liana . . . Who would be the sandak, how many guests we’d invite . . .” She held her body and rocked.

  Leah touched her trembling shoulder. “Come, try to sleep. Let the stitches heal.” She pulled the blanket over her, tucking her in, watching her eyes close and her breathing grow restful.

  Suffering did different things to different people, she thought, taking out her well-worn prayer book, thumbing its familiar pages. Some souls became tempered, unshakable in their faith, while others became twisted and misshapen, throwing off all connection to God. She looked at the pages wrinkled from the moisture of fallen tears, the touch of countless turnings, the vicissitudes of different climates and different continents and different joys and sorrows.

  She had no doubt Jon would endure the pain inflicted on him with courage. But the pain of witnessing his child suffer? He was young, an American, a doctor. All his life he had lived among kind people. Even in the army, he had been a medic, saving lives. Unlike her, he had had no months in a ghetto, no time to prepare. He had been thrust into a terrible reality with no warning.

  She looked down at the ancient Hebrew words. Enemies changed, horrors changed, misfortunes changed. Only the words, she thought, stayed the same, a boulder in the raging stream: “From the depths, I cry to you, my Lord, and He answered . . .”

  All through that bitter-cold night, they had coursed through her, keeping her alive. Wherever Jon was, she hoped their power would be great enough to sustain him too.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Kala el-Bireh, Samaria (West Bank)

  Thursday, May 9, 2002

  2:30 A.M.

  “ABA, TELL ME the story—”

  He held her close, and began once again.

  “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was walking through the forest with her daddy to dance by the lake. All the way there, she danced and danced, picking up flowers and singing . . .”

  “What did she sing?”

  “Oh, you tell it, liana—”

  “I don’t know—” (This was part of the story, where she said she didn’t know, and then he said he didn’t know, and then finally she came up with a song, each time the same song.)

  “Eretz Yisrael shell yaffa vegam porachat . . .” she sang.

  “My Israel is beautiful and blooming. Who built? Who planted? All of us together! I built a house in the land of Israel, so now we have a house, in the land
of Israel . . .” The song went on and on, each time adding something else that was planted or created, each addition followed by the chorus.

  And as he told her the story of how the man and child reached the lake and got into the boat, which took them to the child’s mother waiting across the shore, liana’s eyes began to grow drowsy, until she fell asleep in his arms.

  Jon sat, trying not to move, not to wake her. He had lost his sense of time. He didn’t know if it was morning or evening, the beginning of a new day or the ragged edge of the terrible old one.

  In the last few days, he had gone through many stages. First, there had been the shock, the idea of being detached from the ordinary life men lead. The shock that all the rules of life had changed, been broken. The shock of powerlessness, the almost unbearable longing for Elise and home, the sickening disgust at the ugliness around him. The insult and the rank injustice of the beatings that rained on him for no reason, except to amuse his torturers. And the most powerful feeling of all, that which overrode all the others, the horrendous fear that they would harm his child.

  He was almost grateful for the beatings, grateful that they used up their energy on him, leaving liana alone. He looked at his own life objectively, almost apathetically. Not that he didn’t want to live. He did. Every nerve ending, every breath, cried out for sustenance, for survival, for rescue. But he could somehow envision his death almost clinically, the ceasing to exist that would come when his heart stopped beating, his lungs ceased to fill with air, and his skin grew inflexible and cold.

  But liana—he felt the warmth of her breath on his fingertips as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He could not, would not, envision this for her, his child. And each time he prayed, he offered God his life for hers.

  She was tired, afraid, wet, hungry, thirsty, dirty. The last time he had begged them for help for her . . . He touched his nose gingerly. The blood had terrified her, and he had not asked again.