Not Me

by Michael Lavigne

  Light as air, made of nothing but sound, it pierced their hearts. Even the strongest, Avigdor, the sabra, began to weep. Without speaking, one of the women fashioned a white flag from a bloodied bedsheet and tied it to a wooden spoon.

  Heshel Rosenheim stood up and peered over the sandbags.

  The desolate land was stretched out before him, the broken buildings, the burned-out fields, the smoldering trees, the bodies of men and women scattered like grim confetti in colors of red, brown, and gray on the hardened, merciless sand. One of those could be his Moskovitz, he thought, another his Dovid. He suddenly understood how much time had passed, for the sun had moved far across the fine blue sky—why, it was late afternoon! He had flown through this day almost as if it had never happened—and it was the one day in which everything had happened. He saw that there was movement among the corpses—some were alive! Moskovitz could be alive. She was smart, she was swift. Perhaps she was hiding beneath some rock or slab of concrete or in some hole, or had escaped through the runoff canal down into the wadi, skirted the village, made her way to the next outpost, or was lying right in front of him, flat on her stomach, only pretending to be dead, waiting for him to come and get her, drag her back to safety, so that they could slip like earthworms through the enemy lines in the black of night, and make their way up the coastal highway to the fortified Tel Aviv, or she had dug a little tunnel for herself and made it all the way to the orange grove where she refreshed herself with fruit, then snaked her way from tree to tree, stump to stump, and out onto the dunes that led to the sea, where perhaps she had disguised herself as an Arab woman—she was dark, was she not? dark eyes, dark hair—and so perhaps she walked among the Egyptians exchanging pleasant glances, until she walked right through them and found a little village where they might feed and bathe her, comb her hair, take her silence for shock or infirmity, keep her safe until one night she might escape and find her way home. She could have done that, any of that, she could be lying under a dead cow, or under the boards of the fallen watchtower, she could be holding Dovid in her arms, soothing him, pressing his wounds closed with her strong hands, whispering to him, Courage! Courage! and he would be smiling back, saying, No, I am the happiest man on Earth!

  “I see them out there,” he suddenly said. “Moskovitz! I see you! Dovid! I see you! There they are. I can’t leave them there, can I? What would we be,” he cried, “if we left them there?”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tuli rushing up to restrain him, but he cocked his gun and ran out into the face of the Egyptian army.

  CHAPTER 31

  When he awoke he was lost in whiteness. Sunlight washed over him in one great wave, too bright for his eyes. A woman was near him, also in white, but dark eyes, dark hair, and the scent of dried flowers. “Fradl,” he said. And then he went dark again.

  But the one in the next cot over turned out to be Avigdor.

  “We’re in Cairo,” he explained, rather jovially.

  “Very funny.”

  “No, we are. We’re prisoners. This is the prison hospital. Actually it’s not a prison. It’s the general hospital. They’re treating us quite well, as a matter of fact.”

  “We were captured?”

  “We surrendered.”

  “I didn’t surrender.”

  “You did.”

  It was like this, he told him. Tuli had shot him. Yes! You were running out like a crazy man, mumbling, screaming. He meant to shoot you in the leg, but in the commotion shot you in the chest. He was very upset about it. But after all, was he supposed to sacrifice all of us because you had lost your head? They would have shelled us to pieces. Anyway, he shot you. You went down hard, and we thought you were dead. But we had to act quickly, I guess, and Tuli ran out with the flag, the white flag on the spoon. It was kind of humorous in a way, in retrospect. But at the time we didn’t know if they would shoot him or not. He walked out there with a sheet tied to a spoon. They could have mowed him down. We were all concentrated on that. We’d forgotten about you, to be honest. An officer came forward to meet him. They exchanged words, and they seemed to be arguing, which scared the hell out of us, but then Tuli waved, and one by one we each came out, laying down our guns so they could see them. Then someone, I think it was Tamara, you know, the cook, she said “Hey! He’s alive.” She meant you. So we dragged you out with us.

  Avigdor shrugged, “And now we’re all here.” He was referring not to the hospital but the prison compound, which, he explained, was basically an army barracks. “Nothing terrible,” he said. “In the meantime, there’s a cease-fire. They never made it to Tel Aviv. We stopped them!”

  Heshel laughed. “A prisoner of war?”

  “Yeah,” said Avigdor, “the war is over for us.”

  Heshel studied the ceiling, which was cracked in many places and thick with a long history of paint. He had finally made it to Egypt. He was finally out of the mess he’d gotten himself into. His plan had worked in spite of everything.

  The sun was warm, and the windows were open, letting in the flies. A radio was playing Arabic music, and down in the kitchen dinner was being prepared and the aroma of cumin seeped up through the floorboards. It was a large ward with many beds, and families were visiting their sick, so the air was filled with chatter. It was lovely, actually.

  Obviously, they weren’t worried about anyone escaping. The two guards near the doors were playing an amiable game of cribbage and smoking cigarettes, and the nurse was sitting at her desk writing reports, content to let the day pass without her assistance. Heshel’s head was beginning to clear, and he was beginning to remember—the battle, and before that the confrontation with Levin, and before that laying the mines, and before that the drive through the desert, the days in the watchtower, the evening in the orange grove, the revelation of her kisses, and before all that, the trip across the sea, the D.P. camp, the British soldier offering him Spam…all the way back he flew, and all the way forward.

  Her voice came to him now, and the scent of her skin. And then, as if a film were projected onto the ceiling, he saw her pounding the dirt when the PIAT wouldn’t fire, and running with Dovid toward the safety of the trench. What had happened then? The screen went blank. Yet perhaps he had seen something. Perhaps out of the corner of his eye, those eyes which had been so unearthly clear-sighted—but nothing came to him.

  There was a pitcher of water nearby. He tried to pour himself a glass, but found he could move only with great difficulty. His chest was bandaged all around, and when he twisted his torso he cried out in pain. The nurse and guards looked up. She said something that Heshel could not understand, and she left the ward.

  “I’ll help you, Yekkeh,” said Avigdor. “I’m only in with a little dysentery.”

  Heshel looked at him. “What happened to Moskovitz?”

  “Who?” he said.

  “Yael.”

  “Ah,” said Avigdor, “Yael.”

  Avigdor poured the water into the glass and set the pitcher down with care. He was a large man with large hands and a boisterous disposition, and it was difficult for him to be delicate. He laid himself down on his cot and cradled his head in his arms, thinking how to begin.

  “After the surrender,” he said quietly, “a few of the Jewish commanders—Tuli, Gabriel, maybe someone else—were allowed to walk through the battlefield and count our dead and collect our wounded. Already the Arab villagers, or some of them, anyway, were scavenging whatever they could get their hand son—you know, pulling clothes off corpses, wedding rings, shoes—whatever they could steal. Someone ran off with our sewing machine. They took the typewriter. The milk pails. The kids’ pencil boxes. Anything. Everything. We saw them floating parts of the piano down the drainage canal. And they were whooping and singing and having a good time. We couldn’t understand it. They were our friends. I tell you this not to upset you, but because it’s what happened. The Egyptian officer told Tuli he regretted this, but what could he do? That’s what he said, anyway. What can I
do? So Tuli and the officer walked through that graveyard as these vultures picked at our dead—and there were many dead, Heshel, many. I can’t help but get very emotional, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m crying, but when I think of our heroes, when I think of Lev and Shlomo and Dodi…I knew them all my life, some of them. You and your friends were new, since the war, so you can’t understand. Or maybe you can, I don’t know. Not that we didn’t love you, too. For sure we did. When we called you Yekkeh, the German, it was with affection. I hope you know that.”

  “I know that,” said Heshel. “But tell me about Moskovitz.”

  “I can only tell you what Tuli saw. It was not very far from Post 5. They had been trapped between some debris and the trench, got caught out in the open. During the worst part of the battle, I guess. It looked like your soldier—I don’t remember his name, the Frenchman—Dovid, right?—Dovid—he must have been hit first, because…well, because she was cradling him in her arms, on her lap. He was dead, though apparently she didn’t know he was dead because she was crying for them to help him. They came up to her—Tuli and the Egyptian officer. But don’t jump to conclusions, because, because…” He sighed deeply. “Well, as soon as he saw her, he knew it was bad, really bad. These things are so hard to talk about. But here it is. Her belly had been ripped open. Her guts were pouring out on the ground beside her—it was obvious, it was obvious what happened—she had stayed with the Frenchman to help him. She could have run for it, but she didn’t. She was going to help him, you know, to hang on, and maybe she thought that when the shooting stopped she’d pull him to safety or something, or maybe she’d just surrender so he could get some help—I don’t know what was in her mind. Heshel, she was gutted like a fish. Her insides were all on the ground beside her. Tuli begged the Egyptian officer for a doctor, but the guy told him she was too far gone and he had too many of his own wounded, but Tuli made him promise, made him promise to bring a stretcher and take her to the field hospital, but the officer said to him, ‘Maybe you should shoot her.’ But Tuli said back to him, ‘You did this! You shoot her!’ but neither of them could do it. Tuli said she was beautiful then, like an angel—her face, radiant like a bride, he said. I don’t know what he meant by that, she must have looked terrible, but that’s how he described it. Anyway, he tried to calm her, but all she said was, ‘Take care of Dovid first.’ So the Egyptian promised he’d send the stretcher. Tuli said he made him promise twice. And then they left her there, to find more wounded, and count more dead.”

  “But then she’s alive!” he cried.

  Avigdor shook his head. “I don’t think so. She didn’t make it here with us. We haven’t heard a word about her.” He paused and said with great difficulty, “And there were stories.”

  “What stories?”

  “In the Arab village. The one we thought of as our friends.”

  “What about them?”

  “They cut off heads, put them on poles. Two heads. Ran around all night celebrating, then threw them to the dogs. One of the heads…was a woman.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “It’s only a story, I don’t know.”

  “It can’t be,” he said again.

  Avigdor closed his eyes and said no more.

  None of this seemed possible. He’d seen them so close to the trench. They were inches from safety. Up on the ceiling above his bed he could see them all three huddled together, then he watched as they’d left him, saw them scurrying up the field toward the trench, slipping beneath some blown-out concrete. Then he had turned to throw his grenade.

  And then he knew what had happened.

  “They weren’t shot,” he said. “And she wasn’t bayoneted, if that’s what you think. It wasn’t a mortar either.”

  “Sure it was. Or she was stabbed and gutted.”

  “No,” he said. “No one was that near them.”

  “What then?”

  “Grenade,” he said.

  He understood it all now.

  He understood why he had been granted such clarity of vision. Why every nuance of the field was at his command. Why he had become so fearless and reckless and full of hope. Why he was allowed his one moment of supreme happiness.

  No, she had not stayed behind to save Dovid. She was killed with him, by the same explosion. The German grenade had misfired. He had seen that kind of wound before, it was so common it even happened in training. And yes, somewhere in the back of his head, he had heard it go off, hadn’t he? He must have. And one of his secret eyes must have seen Dovid’s arms fly from his body like rockets, spewing fuel of blood, and his other eye must have seen Moskovitz thrown into the air, her stomach splitting open like a tin can, terror and surprise on her face. He had given them the instrument of their own deaths. He must have known what would happen. Had to know. Killer of Jews. Heinrich Mueller, SS-Obersturmführer.

  Now he understood the meaning of divine retribution. Even if there were no God, now, for him, there was. A God that would never set him free. Never undo what had been done. Never absolve him of his crimes.

  It had been the grenade.

  Avigdor watched him. After a while he took a deep breath and spoke again.

  “There is something else I should probably tell you.”

  Heshel lay still as a stone.

  “She was pregnant,” he said. “They could see the child.”

  Wincing in pain, the wounded man turned on his side so that Avigdor could not see his face.

  “Six months pregnant at least. She was hiding it. Can you imagine? If anyone had known,” he added, “she would never have been allowed to stay.”

  In a little while the nurse came strutting down the floor, followed by the doctor, a small man wearing a fez and a vested tweed suit. He had a jolly smile, and spoke a beautiful, richly textured English.

  “Ah,” the doctor said pleasantly, “he seems to be awake!”

  He picked up the charts.

  “Heshel Rosenheim…is that right?”

  Heshel looked at him.

  “Your name? Do we have it correctly? Heshel Rosenheim?”

  When the prisoner did not respond, the nurse eyed the doctor with concern and said something to him in Arabic. He shrugged and then bent down and spoke directly into his patient’s ear, as if he might have lost his hearing, perhaps due to shell shock.

  “Your name. What is it? Who are you? Can you hear me? Who exactly are you?”

  “My name? Who am I?” he said in Hebrew.

  “What is he saying?” asked the doctor.

  This time it was the nurse’s turn to shrug.

  The man in the bed stared past the doctor, up to the white-painted ceiling. He tried to see what he had seen before—the movie of his life—he tried to see his boyhood days in Berlin, his mother and his father, he tried to smell the mothballs of his mother’s cedar chest, or taste the schnitzel she prepared on Thursdays, he tried to feel the comfort of sitting at his father’s knee, studying his grammar and listening to his father’s stories in French and Italian, he tried to see himself in his new SS uniform, and feel the oil that he used on his dagger as he rubbed it between his fingers, and he tried to see himself sitting in his dark office with his precious accounting books, ordering the little men in striped suits to do his bidding, he tried to feel the pleasure of that, he tried to see the long march back to Bergen-Belsen, and the last days of starvation and fear, and how he hid among the corpses and how he avoided the lice and how he carved the numbers in his flesh and how he fooled the British and how he laughed when the starving Jews died from eating too much too soon, and how he fooled the Jews in their D.P. camp and how he slogged onto the shores of this strange land, and how he plotted his escape and how he was ambushed by the Arabs who he thought could save him, and how he came to be a soldier in the army of his enemy, and how he fell in love with the woman of a hated race, and how he fathered a child who would never know its father, and how he was shot by his own captain at the very moment he had grasped his own salvation—but none
of it came to him. All he saw was the blank, white, broken plaster of the bare ceiling, bright with nothing.

  He looked at the doctor. Finally, he could be anyone he wanted to be.

  “My name is Heshel Rosenheim,” he said.

  CHAPTER 32

  I was startled when I heard him cry out.

  He was looking straight ahead, as if someone were standing at the foot of his bed.

  He reached out his hand. “Please!” He was speaking in some mix of Yiddish and German, his voice almost inaudible, shattered, like glass. “Come closer so I can see you.”

  Even though he wasn’t speaking to me, it was I who came closer.

  “Dad,” I said, touching his shoulder gently.

  He suddenly looked at me as if waking from a dream.

  “Your brother was just here,” he announced.

  “I don’t have a brother,” I said.

  “Oh no, that’s right, you don’t.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No,” he said simply.

  “I’m Michael,” I said. “I’m your son.” When there was no response, I asked him, “Do you remember your name?”

  “My name?” He thought for a while. “No,” he finally admitted. He began to cry. “Isn’t that awful? I can’t remember my name. Can you tell me?”

  But before I could answer, his eyes lit up. He suddenly seemed to recognize me. “Israel! You’ve come! You’ve come!”

  “I’m not Israel, Dad. I’m Michael. I don’t even know anyone named Israel.”

  “Don’t lie,” he said, stroking my hand. “It’s all right. You don’t have to hide from me anymore.”

  “Who is Israel?” I said.

  “Who is Israel? What a question!” He tried to squeeze my hand, but all his strength had finally abandoned him. And yet somehow he found the strength to smile. “After all this time! Have you read everything?”