by Gary Barwin
“There are many people and little space,” Avram said. “Someone’s cheek will recognize your mother’s jowl if she’s here.”
“How to live without my mother?” Motl said. “She’s your head kicked by a mule. Sure your skull hurts, but you can’t survive without it. ‘It’s not my time,’ she’d say. ‘I’m busy. I’m still raising a child. A Jewish mother’s always raising a child.’ ”
“Right. A Jewish child doesn’t become viable until it’s a doctor or lawyer. And even then.”
From a seat near the front, Motl heard a voice he recognized.
Lev. His aunt’s neighbour, who had disappeared with Gitl from the farm cabin.
“You’re here? You’re safe? Where’s my mother?”
“Motl,” Lev said. “Can it really be you?”
“Depends who’s asking.”
“Let me embrace you, my Motl. I thought I’d never see you again.”
“What happened to my mother?”
“Gitl…”
“Yes. I know her name.”
“I had no choice. They came to the cabin at night. I was in the field making a pish on flowers. I called for help and your mother came out. They took us both away. Here. They clubbed me with the butt of a rifle.” He touched a puffy scar running along the side of his face. “They beat me.”
“And my mother?”
Lev looked down. “Also.”
“You gave her to them.”
Esther placed her hand on Motl’s chest as he made to rush Lev. “Motl,” she said.
“That’s not how it was,” Lev said.
“Then where is she? At Ponary? At a fort? In a ditch? Wherever she is, it’s because of you. Where’s the gun, Esther? I’m going to shoot this traitor right in his poison heart. Give me the gun.”
“Motl,” Lev said. “I was terrified and so I shouted. I didn’t mean to call for her. I was calling for you, but you were too drunk to wake up.”
“So where is she?”
“We were thrown in a wagon with others. They drove us somewhere, then locked us in a barn. There was a farmer who wanted us to strip naked, to steal our clothes and sell them, but also to shame us. When he said to your mother, ‘Take off your dress. Take everything off,’ I punched him. I knocked him down. Then I ran. They shot at me, but I escaped into the forest.”
“But you didn’t bring my mother with you?”
“What could I do? I had to run.”
“But where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“And my sister?”
Lev was silent.
2
What family? Which town? What neighbourhood? Who the father? The mother? Triangulation on top of triangulation like a Jewish star. A taxonomy of Yids. It was that Chaya they were looking for. That Gitl. Motl the brother. An encyclopedia of story, the trail twisting across Lithuania from Kaunas to Ponary and—if the constellations of yellow stars allowed it and Gitl had crawled from the grim pit—perhaps now to Vilnius. Lev had left her in the barn and he had not seen her here, but he had not been in the ghetto for long, his path having taken him into forests, attics, cowsheds and swamps. And the ghetto was actually two ghettos, one beside the other, separated by Niemiecka Street, their single entrances on opposite sides so no one entering or leaving the two ghettos could see each other.
The large ghetto and the small one, the division created by the Nazis on the principle that one hand wouldn’t know what the other was doing, or rather, neither would know what the Nazis had planned. Perhaps Chaya was in the Small Ghetto. Avram would send a message. He had ways. Though he’d said that ghetto had already been “cleansed.”
Evening. Moon in the sky over the narrow streets and their arches. Motl wasn’t expecting it, but there it was, pale, docile, obtuse as a cow.
In the night, they were offered blankets and floor space in a house as crammed as a stable. Children, old men and women, parents and the unmarried roosted on the landings of stairs, in corridors, kitchens, attics and closets. Under tables, on couches, chairs, carpets and bare floor. First, though, they would share what food they had. Bread. Some cheese. Cabbage. Potatoes.
Esther: “If only we still had salami in our pants.”
Motl: “You don’t know the half of it.”
Two brothers—Jakob and Abe—were chawing at some obscure foodstuff on the landing. They had a flask under their blankets, and took alternate swigs between bites, becoming louder with each snort.
“I’m older,” Jakob said.
“No. It’s me,” Abe said.
“You’re wrong. I was born first.”
“That doesn’t make you older!”
“It does!”
“Not necessarily. I’d ask Mom and Dad—but they’re dead.”
They each had another gulp, and then their bleary eyes came to rest on Motl.
“Wait. That guy down there.”
“Who?”
“The new guy.”
“Motl?”
“Yes.”
“He’s older than me.”
“I know.”
“I’ve something to tell him.” Abe staggered to his feet, gripping the banister against the convulsing of the world around him, and lurched downstairs.
He bent close enough to Motl that Motl was able to definitively determine the young colt’s age by a close yet involuntary examination of the occlusal surfaces of his lower incisors.
“Motl,” the youth said. “Motl. I have something to say. I have something I must tell you.”
In such circumstances, an appropriate response is both irrelevant and impossible.
“Your sister is Chaya?”
“Yes,” Motl said, suppressing hope, expecting spittle.
“I saw her. Here. In Vilnius. It was when the Germans came and made Rabbi Kessler take his clothes off. They made everyone take their clothes off. They piled a heap of Torahs in the middle of Žydų. Strasse and set them on fire. They made the rabbi dance in the flames until he died. They made your sister dance in the flames too. Then she died. Sorry.”
The vodka-sloshed youth turned and staggered back toward the stairs, achieved the second step and toppled back, insensate and silent.
Motl said nothing, his insides a braid of impossible feelings.
What to do now?
What was there to do? Motl and Esther turned to their bread and cabbage and those who had shared their meagre biscuit supply. Hershel, Ruth, Isaak, Viktor, Bela, Pinchas. A woman, Chava, passed them each a section of knobbly apple.
“My father was a teacher in the yeshiva,” Chava said. “He had no sons, so he taught me. Torah and Talmud, everything the sages said, all their teachings, all their stories. But everything’s different now. The only thing left, the only story, is this world.”
Esther said, “Think I’d rather hear about Exodus. I’d rather be whipped, spend the rest of my life building pyramids, kowtowing on my knees and sticking my nose in the sand before pharaohs.”
“If I got to choose, I’d rather this was Egypt too. A few boils, bugs, blood. And it was only their first-born,” Hershel said. “They had others.”
“Why’s God doing this to us? Why can’t He allow us peace?” said Isaak, the old man.
“Maybe He prefers us to suffer?” Chava said.
“What happened to Him that He takes it out on us?” Bela asked.
“And what kind of home,” Motl asked, “could He have had without a mother?”
“It’s not God, it’s the Nazis,” said Hershel. “God sucked back all the kiddush wine and scrammed off to His dacha outside of Heaven, far from head office with its secretaries, angels and all-powerful Holy red phone, which He left off its divine hook in case He heard it dinging on the other side of the clouds. He’s not involved in this. He’s gone.”
“Not to mention He doesn’t exist,” Chava said.
“My father would say He created everything, including atheism,” Bela said.
“And my father would say that atheism created Him,” Pinchas said, “so we had something to not believe in.”
“Why make more? There’s more than enough of that already,” Hershel said.
“When my mother was ill, her body knotted by pain, I was helping her shuffle from porch to table,” Esther said. “And in the few feet between, she told me that once, as a girl, during the revolution, she’d watched soldiers take her neighbours to the end of the street. They shot them, then piled the bodies on a wagon with others who had starved to death. The wagon trundled by her front gate and it was then, she said, at sixteen, that she knew she no longer believed in God. She lived on to spite Him, in spite of Him, because she would not be bested by the world or, at least, its bitterness. Until she was.”
“If you believe the world exists outside of you, then it does. If you don’t, there’s no way to prove it’s actually there—no matter how many times someone punches you in the face,” Chava said.
“I could make this war up?” Hershel said. “To create something like this—it takes a god or a monster.”
“They say that little house painter Hitler—with his you-have-to-be-this-tall-to-ride salute and sputtering-copulation-of-tractors speeches—has only one ball.”
“And that makes him a monster?”
“It doesn’t make him a god.”
“Well, at least he hasn’t used the one he has.”
“Good thing he had no children. ‘Sorry, kids, I invaded your bedroom.’ ”
“ ‘Sorry, sweetie, I didn’t attend your dance recital. I had to deal with the Jews.’ ”
“And the kids’ haircuts? ‘Make it look like a dead crow’s wing, Bitte.’ ”
“Think of the bedtime stories.”
“And, ‘Please, Dad, we’ll wash. But no showers. Baths only.’ ”
* * *
—
How does a ghetto sound at night, gates closed, streets empty, lookouts in windows, a weary vibration worrying everyone inside? Who sleeps? Sighs, grinding snores, muttering, weeping, the small sounds of intimacy, prayer, words to children, those awake shifting, twisting in makeshift beds.
Esther and Motl on a blanket in an empty kitchen. Another blanket covering them both. Esther, head on Motl’s shoulder. Motl on his back, looking up into the darkness.
“Motl,” she whispers, kisses his cheek, then kisses his cheek again. Her hand on his chin, his face turns toward her. She kisses his lips. Then she kisses them again.
“We can be brave,” she says.
“Yup,” he says, soothed for just a minute.
Sleep.
Motl in a dream of a prairie night, crammed with stars, jingling like spurs.
And howling.
3
Morning. Plonked in the middle of history, the ghetto acted as if life were normal. For now. What else to do? There were schools. Theatre. A library. Musicians. Newspapers. Children.
“Not sure I want to find out for sure about my mother,” Motl said as he and Esther woke. “At least not like I learned of my sister last night.”
“But maybe Avram has heard something.”
“What will we do then?”
“Depends what he heard.”
* * *
—
Shouting from the streets. Gunfire. Banging. Screams.
“Raus. Raus.” Out. Out.
“Soldiers.”
“Hide.”
“This way,” Esther said, and they barrelled out the back door, racing for Avram’s cellar.
When they got there, they found the bins toppled and the hatch open. They didn’t risk going inside, but went down another alley and up the stairs behind a butcher shop where they’d been told the resistance met. One knock then two then another single knock. The password.
The door opened: Avram.
“Come.” An inside staircase to another cellar, where Esther and Motl, together with Viktor, Avram, Moshe and Chiena—heavily pregnant—clustered in the pearlescent dusk of cobwebs. A heap of stones beside a foul hole, a broken-open sewer, three feet wide.
“Where does it go?”
“Somewhere outside the ghetto. Hopefully not right into a Nazi latrine.”
“We’ve guns. They’ll be surprised.”
“ ‘Friend or enema?’ ” Motl said. No one laughed.
They squeezed through, feet slipping on the slick floor. To begin, they had to crouch or almost shimmy through the narrow way. It was a challenge for Viktor, who was large, and of course Chiena, the pregnant woman. Giving birth in a sewer was far from ideal, unless one were a rat. Only the Germans imagined them that.
And they had to be silent in order to remain undetected. It would not be difficult for a Nazi to lob a grenade into the tunnels and mash them like potatoes. Or else to open a valve and flood them. Or the soldiers could lower themselves into these dank passageways like Wehrmacht terriers hunting, except with lights, rifles and sociopathic anti-Semitism.
Escaping, they moved in the dark of their burrow. They reached out blindly, one hand resting on the person before them, one hand helping them balance against the sludgy sewer wall. Where there was water, or the sudden abyss of a downward pipe, they would pass a rope between them as if navigating a peak. Jewish exodus as charm bracelet. It was a fearful place, the city’s colon, toxic with waste.
At a convergence of tunnels, they discovered a ledge. A moment for food, water and rest. A grunt from Chiena. She looked at them all: a contraction.
“Wait,” Avram said. As if it were within her control. Of course, he should have spoken to the baby.
Above them, soldiers on patrol visible through the sewer grate. Their boots. The staccato sibilance of German.
They felt the temptation to shoot. But instead, they would be silent. Avram motioned for them to keep moving.
Another contraction and Chiena groaned.
Scuffing of the boots above. “There’s someone down there,” a soldier hissed. The barrel of a rifle pushed through the grate.
“The wall,” Avram whispered, and they pressed themselves against it. The reverberation of gunfire. Muzzle flash. The tunnel lit as if by fireworks. Echoes. Not the ping ping of movie shootouts. Viktor managed not to cry out when a bullet hit him, just grabbed his thigh, blood leaking between his fingers.
Chiena suppressing another groan. Esther tore a strip of cloth from her skirt and wrapped Viktor’s leg.
They moved down the tunnel.
“Seems they now know we’re here,” Esther said to Motl.
“There are a few indications.”
“What about his leg? He’s limping.”
“And Chiena…”
“Do we get out of the sewer?”
“It’s not safe. Outside the ghetto we’ll be certain to be killed. Inside, also,” Motl said.
“Then we stay here.”
* * *
—
Western tales of mine shafts ended in collapse and death. Fumes and explosions or shootouts with bandits trapped in darkness. Nothing glittering, nothing gold. Everything turned smoke and ghosts.
But then the good man, the middle-aged last-chance sheriff, a wizened tumbleweed, rolled in against the odds and changed a town’s luck to sun-over-the-mountains brightness. Maybe he gets the girl, finally after all these years, becoming a mensch. Fills his drawers with new-found goolies.
What does a hero look like when the West—or the East or the borderlands—is a building in flames, a library, the roof collapsing, the books on fire. He remembers what he was reading and runs. He grabs armfuls of books and runs. He scoops children in his arms and runs. He goes down with his people then turns to story. He leaps o
nto the back of his horse and rides and the people see him riding for a hundred miles, a hundred years, across the vast chimerical plains and know that they too can go on, despite the burning, the killing, the tragedies and thirst. When a story falls on you, just make sure to be in the middle, like an actor in a silent film saved by the doorway.
The tunnel began to slope down. They held on, careful not to lose their footing and slide as if in a chute, falling into further darkness and what else?
They reached a cavern and a large cesspool, which caused them to grimace in its reek. Scuttling. Cold vapours. Viktor clutching his leg, grimacing. Chiena, labouring, sobbing with each pain.
On a brick shore, they took off their jackets and laid down the bags to make a place for her to labour. A delivery room in the underworld, necessity being the midwife of invention. Necessity making Esther a midwife, also.
“I have the parts,” she said. “I myself was born, but other than that, I know nothing about it.”
Chiena gasped out, “I also want to know nothing about birth. Just give me morphine and twilight sleep.” She laid her head on Esther’s lap, biting her hand in an attempt to keep quiet, but her agony was still clear. Esther stroked her head and spoke softly. Perhaps labour was unfamiliar to her, but pain and consolation were not.
The contractions accelerated, waves rushing in, a tide quickly pulled by moon.
Avram clambered toward the tunnel. “I’m getting help. I know where we are—I think. There’s a Polish couple—allies and doctors.”
* * *
—
She’d had to endure most of the labour while they were on the move, but the actual birth was a series of mercifully brief earthquakes, shaking and twisting through Chiena’s body. Then Esther caught the child, soon placing it to feed, wet and bloody, covered in a food sack, on Chiena’s breast. A boy.
She’d tied a rag around the umbilical cord, then cut it with a knife. “Welcome to the world, baby.”
“Hershel, after my father,” Chiena said.
“Hershel,” Esther said.
Another contraction and Chiena delivered the placenta.