“What’s more,” she further clarified, “I’m not sure the book actually is a diary, strictly speaking.” In fact, the battered leather-bound volume she’d received after her father’s death was a storybook, a collection of eighteen stories, each dated, each written in her father’s even, serious, yet clearly boyish hand. The lines of text flowed perfectly straight across the pages, without erasure or correction, as if he’d copied them into the book from a separate draft. As a researcher and historian, Vanesa could clearly see that these texts had been lovingly and meticulously written. Did this speak to the significance of the stories themselves to young Michael, or to some pressing need to create beauty and perfection in the terribly flawed world in which the twelve-year-old lived?
She couldn’t tell.
He’d created one story roughly every month during the period between February 1943 and October 1944, when—according to Nazi records—he’d been sent to his death in Auschwitz. The final total number of stories, eighteen, did not escape Vanesa’s notice. Eighteen was the numerical value of the letters making up the Hebrew word chai—‘life.’
The stories themselves were clearly related from a twelve-year-old’s weltanschauung. The language was simple, the plotlines linear and easy to follow, yet the content was nonetheless insightful, engaging, and moving. The stories revealed a sensitive and oratorical side of her young father that she’d never met in the silent, introverted adult version.
They told of Michael’s imagined—or perhaps real—meetings with a set of characters, each with his or her unique story. All were told from Michael’s perspective, first-person, as if he had heard them directly from their source. This is where it got confusing. The characters, Vanesa thought, were incredibly diverse, both in geography and culture, and their stories were amazingly detailed. Michael must have had limited access to research resources during his stay in… wherever he’d been during those almost two years. So how could he know the intimate details of the lives of a Zionist youth movement activist who emigrated to Palestine, a pubescent Moroccan girl about to be wedded to her second cousin, a Jewish American GI hiding in World War II Prague, a Polish shtetl housewife trying to deal with poverty and her husband’s suspected infidelity, a Jewish Iraqi carpet merchant in debt to the local mafia, a Turkish moneylender struggling to hide his gambling addiction, and all the others?
Where had her father gotten the ideas for such stories? How had he learned the details of Moroccan cuisine, Iraqi carpet weaving, agricultural schools in Palestine, or daily life in a small American town? She had no answers to these or the hundreds of other questions that had flooded her historian’s curiosity since she’d received the book many months ago.
She had no answers, but she did have hope.
She had hope not just because there were clearly answers to be found, because her father’s story would not remain forever locked away in the iron box which he’d taken to his grave. She had hope because this diary, these stories, perhaps indicated the type of elusive heroic climax that she’d never found in her mother’s story. Had her father actually met the people in his stories? Had he helped them? Was this symbol the key?
After she’d finished recounting the whole thing, Jakobovits looked at her, looked at the paper, looked back at her, and furrowed his brow.
The moment stretched out dramatically, and Vanesa exhaled loudly, suddenly aware that she had been holding her breath.
Finally, Jakobovits said, “I’m afraid I have no idea what this is, or what its exact relevance could be.”
The flutter in Vanesa’s stomach begin to turn into a lurch.
The young man continued eagerly, and started to get up. “However, I do see some familiar runic elements in this shape, which you have certainly already identified, correct? I have a colleague here in the museum who has made sort of a hobby of Nazi symbology. Shall we consult with him? It’s just down the hall.”
Vanesa vigorously nodded her assent, as the hope that had just fled so quickly began to cautiously creep back.
Tel Aviv, June 1991
After Michael’s funeral, Vanesa deflated before my eyes. The air just slipped out of her.
She’d possessed an unswerving, yet unspoken, purpose since pre-adolescence, since she was old enough to function semi-independently in the world, since her mother had died when she was twelve. One mission had occupied her entire being, steered her course at every crossroad, hindered and blessed her in equal measure: take care of Michael, protect him, nurture him. Her mother’s death had unleashed her own mothering instinct, but one so warped by tragedy that it lacked structural integrity, like a heat-twisted steel girder in a burnt-out building. Now this, her mission, her purpose—ineffectual as it may have been—remained unhappily and permanently fulfilled.
“I knew that my father had been through a terrible thing,” she told me late one night, not long after Michael’s death. We stood at the window watching passersby in the waning twilight. She held a sweating Goldstar beer in one hand, a Marlboro Light in the other. “I also knew that it was something not only beyond my comprehension, but beyond my consideration. It was not something I could consciously examine, certainly not something I could vocalize, but it was there, the elephant in the room, taking up space and sucking up the oxygen, making it difficult to move around, to even breathe. It was omnipresent, yet maddeningly invisible. And I knew—I knew—that I had to protect my father from it. He’d faced it once, and it had scarred him forever. I couldn’t let that happen again, but I never knew how to prevent it. It would drive me nuts as a kid.”
She smiled wistfully, took a drag from her cigarette, and let the smoke trail out of the corner of her mouth like Paul Simon’s floating question mark.
We stayed in the flat over the shop on Nahalat Binyamin during the shiva, the traditional seven-day period of mourning. The warm weather forced us to leave the windows open day and night despite the chaotic south Tel Aviv street noise. The narrow street and squat buildings echoed the amalgam of voices, slamming doors, clattering carts, angry horns and grumbling engines. Friends, ours and Michael’s, some that Vanesa didn’t know, made the trek up the building’s narrow and dusty staircase to sip sweet tea with mint from clear glass mugs, or cold water from plastic cups. Some came with pre-prepared platitudes, as flaccid and unappetizing as the desserts they brought. Many just came to sit, offering company, support, and the occasional sincere recollection of Michael from his forty-four years in Israel.
Tomas stayed with us there every day until late in the evening, drinking endless cups of tea, until shuffling back to his own flat two blocks over on Kfar Giladi Street. Vanesa found his presence comforting. He was the closest thing she now had to family.
I had my own opinions about Uncle Tomas, but had learned to keep them to myself.
The Jewish tradition of a near-immediate burial—often on the same day as the death, as in Michael’s case—and the constrained seven-day mourning period encouraged the bereaved not to dwell on the loss, nor negate its weight, but rather to use it as a springboard to the future. Toward the end of the week, Vanesa was beginning to heal, beginning to re-inflate herself, to look forward and start to imagine a future without her father.
Until, that is, the lawyer showed up and shook her world once again to its foundations.
We sat alone in the apartment on the sixth day of the shiva, low tide as far as visitors went. Those eager to come immediately had already come, and even returned more than once to reiterate their sympathy. Those for whom the tug of conscience had not yet overcome either laziness or shyness still had a day to vacillate or procrastinate.
Alone in the apartment, we were contemplating an afternoon nap when a knock sounded and a young noir figure opened the door. He wore a black suit, a straight black tie, black loafers, and heavy-rimmed black spectacles above which one black eyebrow crossed his lower forehead from side to side, like a hedge separating face from hairline. He let himself in, a black briefcase in hand, and bowed slightly and stiffly, his fei
gned deference inadequately concealing obvious self-importance. He introduced himself to Vanesa as Moshe Mizrahi, Esquire, her father’s—and now her—lawyer.
I surreptitiously glanced toward Tomas, to gage his reaction. Unaware of my study, his eyebrows rose in momentary surprise, then furrowed deeply, along with his forehead, as he focused on the young man.
Mizrahi officiously conveyed his deepest sympathies to Vanesa, explaining that he’d only represented the family’s interests for some five years, but had quickly come to appreciate her father’s many good qualities, as well as his “prompt fiscal habits.”
I took this to mean that Michael had paid him on time, a relative rarity in the south Tel Aviv business community, where already-lengthy “net plus sixty” payment terms often dragged out to “net plus inshallah”—‘God willing.’
He also informed her that she was within her rights to discuss the matters he needed to address in private, with no one else present.
Afternoon torpor dispelled, Vanesa switched into full analytical mode. Uninterested in mundane formalities, she quickly introduced Tomas and myself, and dismissively told Mizrahi that he could speak freely.
“Very well.” The lawyer looked gravely around the room, eyes piercing through the thick lenses of his glasses. “I am obligated to inform you that Mr. Michael Neuman left a last will and testament. I have already submitted an application for probate, and see no reason that this will, which was both signed in my presence and later notarized, should not be upheld in its entirety.”
Vanesa remained silent, wide-eyed and intent, like a kitten mesmerized by a butterfly.
Mizrahi retrieved a small stapled document from his briefcase, the metal latches snapping alarmingly in the heavy afternoon silence, and continued. “The matter of inheritance is quite straightforward, as well. This apartment, the small commercial property on the first floor of this building, and all assets in the bank accounts detailed herein are bequeathed to Limor Neuman, also known as Vanesa Neuman.”
Vanesa nodded sagely.
I could tell that she had not even considered that she would inherit property worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars. I had thought of this, not without a tinge of shame.
Mizrahi bent to his briefcase again, and extracted a large sealed manila envelope. He turned and handed it to Vanesa. “Mr. Neuman also requested that you be given this upon his death,” he stated simply.
Vanesa opened the envelope and extracted the leather-bound diary. As she recognized the object she’d just received, her eyes went wide, and she almost dropped the heavy book. “I’ve seen this!” she gasped.
This time, I didn’t need to look at Tomas, because I could clearly hear his audible intake of breath.
The diary was simply yet sturdily bound in scuffed brown leather. On the cover, the initials M.N. were embossed in fine calligraphy, as if the diary had been a present for a special occasion. A peeling leather thong tied it all together. Vanessa untied the thong to reveal the heavy cream pages inside, approximately half of which appeared to be filled with neat, flowing cursive writing. Each entry had been dated, the first being in February 1943, the last in October 1944.
Across the whole volume—in pencil, in pen, in charcoal, and even in faded crayon—appeared the symbol whose existence Vanesa would soon curse. The symbol that would play a life-altering role for her and everyone she loved. The symbol whose mystery would—had already, in fact—lead to pain, separation, injury, condemnation, forgiveness, and bitter and remorseless death.
Prague, December 1991
They worked their way down another high-ceilinged, narrow hallway, with dusty bare light bulbs hanging down every several meters on grimy, fabric-wrapped electrical wire. At regular lengths, wooden doors topped by small transom windows opened into rooms containing a virtual cornucopia of Judaica.
Vanesa momentarily smiled at the comically immense quantities of artifacts, but quickly sobered and reminded herself that these piles were, in a very real sense, mass graves.
They did not find the person Jakobovits was looking for, but an employee informed them that Marek Wolff had gone to lunch just around the corner. The hour being already past noon, they decided to join him at the iconic U Golema Restaurant, just next to the 400-year-old Maisel Synagogue on Maiselova Street.
More of a tourist trap than a local hangout, with its Prague Golem motif, the U Golema’s Jewish owners nonetheless catered to a small but devoted lunch crowd from the museum staff, providing them higher-quality and lower-priced fare than that served to the tourists.
Jakobovits spotted Marek and a female colleague at a table in the rear of the restaurant, and waved.
Marek waved back, his arm whacking the life-size statue of the lovably monstrous Golem under which they were seated. The over-commercialized Prague Golem, Vanesa recalled, actually had a history deeper than its “Jewish Frankenstein” image. It had been so popular that a 1920 silent film told its tale to the world. According to legend, the Golem had been created by the renowned Rabbi Loew after he read in the stars that the Jews of Prague were in imminent danger. Made of clay, the Golem became animated when the Rabbi inserted a capsule containing the name of God and a magic formula into its mouth. The Golem lived until the Hebrew letter Aleph was removed from the word that adorned its chest, turning the word emet—‘truth’—into met—‘dead.’
The Golem’s legendary protection from anti-Semitic attacks had, for centuries, comforted Prague’s medieval Jewish community—at least its younger members. As a historian, however, Vanesa was more interested in the long-term atmosphere of fear that led to the creation and perpetuation of such a powerful, lasting, and extreme myth. It was testament to both the resilience of the Prague Jewish community and its fear of the pervasive hostility surrounding it.
Marek reached behind him to steady the Golem before it toppled, and stood when introduced to Vanesa, bumping and righting the monster a second time.
He was quite possibly the least Jewish-looking person Vanesa had ever encountered in a Jewish academic context—tall, blond, and Aryan enough to grace a Hitler Youth poster. His radiant smile, however, and flashing blue eyes could hide neither his intelligence nor his empathy. He stood a full head shorter than Jakobovits, but clearly outweighed him, and sported a ruddy Germanic flush on his roly-poly cheeks.
He greeted her in Czech, but quickly and obstinately switched to pidgin Hebrew when he heard she was from Israel.
She spent the next minutes creating mental parentheses that contained interpretive translations of what he actually meant to say.
He had lived in Israel for fifty years, he said (obviously meaning five). He stayed in a small boat (apartment) in Tel Aviv, where he liked to read (eat) falafel and have sex with the ocean (lie on the beach). What he missed most about Israel, he said, was the abhorrent (relaxed?) nature of the people. People were abhorrent all day long in Tel Aviv, he said, but also really knew how to live life in short (on the edge). He had been studying Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, where he had still had ongoing bushes (dialogs) with many tribe (faculty) members.
As tiring as the translation quickly became, Vanesa found herself nonetheless engaged by the enthusiastic young man.
He concluded his brief Hebrew monologue by explaining, “I only on museum tribe not Jew. But love I work here. My grandfather Nazi in Prague, hurt many Jews. I make justice now, help Jewish to learn.”
At this, he thankfully reverted to Czech, apologizing for his Hebrew indulgence. He introduced Eva, his colleague, a bland-looking woman with short dark hair and eyes that radiated a mixture of boredom and cynicism.
Marek and Vanesa briefly traded enthusiastic stories of Tel Aviv University and life in Tel Aviv, until their conversation faded into an uncomfortable silence.
Marek turned to Jakobovits with a mildly questioning and expectant look, prompting the latter to abruptly remove the sheet of paper Vanesa had given him from an inside pocket and lay it on the table in front of Marek.
&nbs
p; Seeing the symbol, Marek jumped up, violently jarring the small wooden table and tipping two glasses over. Twin streams of water and beer converged to drip directly into Vanesa’s lap, despite her rapid placement of a paper napkin dam on the edge of the table. Backing away from the table, Marek bumped into the giant Golem again, which teetered for a moment and toppled towards the neighboring table, where an alert patron caught and rebalanced it.
Vanesa, instinctively retreating from the table flood in the opposite direction, rammed her chair into the diner behind her, who dropped his soup spoon, splashing his companion with hot soup and causing him to drop his water glass, which shattered on the hardwood floor.
As the Rube Goldberg chain reaction subsided, silence fell over the whole restaurant, and all eyes turned in their direction. Vanesa rubbed vigorously at her wet crotch, and Marek stared at the patron behind him, who held the Golem as if at the outset of a waltz.
“Where did you get this?” Marek said to Vanesa, his incredulous voice booming in the silent restaurant.
“So you’ve seen this before?” Vanesa’s voice was suddenly hopeful.
Marek nodded, apologized to the patron behind him, and drew his chair back up to the table. He lowered his voice and looked into Vanesa’s eyes as she, too, sat back down. “I’ve not only seen it, I have a collection of artifacts on which this symbol appears. The only thing I don’t know is what the hell it means. Do you?”
Wisconsin, 1982
The first time I touched Vanesa Neuman intimately was under an immense Wisconsin sky, by the light of a campfire, with stars so close they were warmed by our heat.
I don’t know how she got permission from her father to go camping with a senior counselor, in those days before Skype and cell phones, when physical distance was actually a factor in communications. I don’t even know if she asked. All I know is that we took off in my peanut butter and cookie-free station wagon with a borrowed tent, some sandwiches, and a joint, and headed for the nearest state park with a level of determination and intensity that only young people eager to be alone can muster.
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