by Shira Nayman
“What was that?”
“He was quoting from some famous German poet. I don’t know, maybe from a hundred years ago—.”
She frowned, trying to retrieve the name. “Heine, I think.” She fell silent.
“What was it?” I asked carefully. “What did the poet say?”
The words seemed stuck in Sarah’s throat; finally, she gave them voice.
“Where they burn books, they will also burn people.”
A shudder ran through me as I recalled the terrible images I first saw when I was eleven years old: skeletal corpses, Jewish people murdered by the Nazis, being bulldozed toward the crematorium, hundreds, thousands, in order to be burned.
“And then, we were running again. Stumbling, tripping. It was so hot, all around us. Ash was flying through the air. I could taste it in my nose and in my mouth. Father must have snatched his tallises before leaving the house; he had two, they were his prize possessions. One was precious to him—passed down in his family for, I don’t know, maybe a hundred and fifty years and given to him on his Bar Mitzvah. It had embroidery made out of real gold. The other one he was given on his wedding day by his wife’s parents—that’s the one he gave me to hold in front of my face, so I wouldn’t breathe in the ash.”
“Behind the tanner’s, the stench got worse—maybe the cow skins were scorched. It was so bad—I felt like I had to vomit. That’s where we found him. In the gutter.”
Horror was etched into Sarah’s features; she cast her eyes downward, as if she could no longer bear to meet my gaze.
“You have no idea …” she said, but then caught herself. “His own mother wouldn’t have recognized him. What they did …” Her throat caught. “Father recognized his yarmulke. Imagine. His yarmulke. Father took his own precious tallis, the one he’d treasured his whole life, and laid it over Yitzhak’s body. He kneeled down, and I kneeled down next to him, and he recited the prayer for the dead. Right there, in the middle of that nightmare. The smoke, the fires we’d left behind us, sucked up all the air. The awful smell was overwhelming. I felt like everything stopped—that there was only us and our words. I’ll never forget the way the old cotton of Father’s tallis slowly turned dark red, until there was no more yellow or gold at all.”
There, in that rough, simple cabin was a stillness that felt as old as time. I don’t know how long we stayed that way, but then, still visibly distressed, Sarah rose and moved aimlessly from here to there, as if trying to remember what task we’d left unfinished.
“I must have been mad,” she said.
“Mad? Why?”
“The trouble died down. That’s what the grown-ups call it. The trouble. I thought it was over, forever. That it was all just bad memories. But now …”
“Yes?”
“Well, you know as well as I do!” It was the first sign I’d seen, on this strange journey, of impatience about my odd situation, about me. As if it was suddenly irritating to Sarah that I didn’t know what I was supposed to know.
“It’s all started up again! How are we supposed to make sense of that? How are we supposed—?” Sarah let her unfinished sentence dangle in the air for a moment. “Just the same as before! Burning Jewish stores and synagogues all around Ezerenai. It’s only a matter of time before the looting and fires reach Dusiat. We’ll never be safe, not ever!”
“The violence is still very far away,” I found myself saying. “Besides, things have changed. I can’t imagine the authorities will let it get so out of hand again.”
I had no idea what I was talking about! Perhaps I was not too far off the mark, though, or perhaps Sarah was just desperate to put the matter from mind. Whatever the reason, after wiping away a tear, she nodded.
“Nothing’s going to happen tonight,” I said. “Tomorrow is another day. Let’s bring in the new year with a spirit of happiness and peace.”
Grandma had told me a little about her mother’s life, how she had fled a terrible pogrom with her family, ending up in South Africa. I knew that Sarah was right—that her family was not safe in Dusiat. I also knew that they would escape, but that many of her family would not. I wanted to reassure her, but it was all so complicated. And in that moment, everything I thought I knew about Sarah from the little snippets I had heard from Mama and Grandma felt papery, like a story I’d once read long ago, not pertaining in any real way to the flesh-and-blood girl before me. What I knew was just a story, a fairy tale or myth. And yet I also knew that the plot of the story, which had been passed along to me by my own mother and grandmother, was, in a sense, true; those events had happened, they were what the future held for my new friend, Sarah, sitting with me here, now, her eyes fiery and afraid.
What if—what if I could say something now that would change that plot, that would make the future unfold differently? In some way that was better for Sarah and her family? The thought pressed on me with the weight of a millstone, leaving me feeling helpless.
Part of me felt there was nothing I could do, that history was unchangeable, that everything, in fact, had already happened the way it was going to happen.
Sarah, however, seemed to have been cheered by my words.
“You’re absolutely right,” she said, her mood brightening. “Come on, let’s get back to work. Why don’t you do the tsimmes? I want to get to the taigelach. It always takes longer than I expect—they’re so fiddly.”
Sarah got busy at the large wooden table with the taigelach dough, forming little balls and dropping them into a clay dish filled with honey.
I trusted I would know what to do, given the way I had so far been mysteriously endowed with whatever language or skill was necessary. I chopped carrots and turnips and threw them into a medium-sized pot, adding a generous cup of sugar. Then I added several handfuls of plums and raisins from one of the wooden barrels we’d brought up from the cellar. I placed the pot on a hook hanging down from a wooden beam over the flames in the fireplace.
Sarah drained the last of her taigelach from the pot of hot oil and plopped down on a wooden chair, giving a satisfied sigh.
“It’s so much easier having you here to help! We might even have a chance for a real rest before the sun goes down. Mother made the holupshas and gefilte fish yesterday, so that leaves only the kugel and the compote. If we’re lucky, Uncle will bring some of that dark chocolate from Vilnius that we had last year. He promised, and you know he’s a man of his word.”
We finished up our preparations in a flurry of contented activity. My stomach let me know with a round of crazed rumblings that we’d not eaten since breakfast. Once again, Sarah read my mind.
“No point stopping to eat now,” she said. “Better to store up our appetites for the huge feast. Otherwise we’ll never get through the meal.”
Against the protests of my gurgling stomach, I nodded. The fabulous smells of all the dishes cooking in the house were a torture—though nothing compared with the excruciating temptation when I brought the steaming challah loaves in from the outdoor oven, my hands protected by thick mittens. It took every ounce of willpower to stop myself from tearing a piece of the glossy caramel-colored loaf and stuffing it into my mouth.
Finally, everything was ready: the table laid with the family’s best linens, crockery, and silverware, the candles secured in silver candlesticks, the challahs on their special plate, covered with the white embroidered challah cloths Sarah’s mother had ironed before sunrise.
Sarah boiled up a huge pot of water and poured it into the metal tub by the back door. A sheet hanging from the rafters gave us privacy; we stripped down and climbed into the steaming water. Sarah handed me a bar of brown soap that felt hard and smooth as a candle. I brought it to my nose; it smelled like honey.
“You’re always sniffing things, aren’t you,” she said, smiling.
“It’s just that it’s all so—” I caught myself. I was going to say—all so new and strange, living in another place and time.
“Everything is so—what?” she asked.
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br /> “Fragrant, I suppose,” I said.
Sarah cocked her head, gave me that look—the look they’ve all given me at some moment or other, in each of the worlds I’d visited. I steeled myself. Here it comes, I thought. The question.
“Hadassah, I was just wondering—” she began, faltering a little.
“Yes?”
“Well I know it’s a strange thing to ask, but it’s just, well—who, exactly, are you?” Squinting at me through the steam, Sarah seemed a little taken aback by her own words.
“Why, I’m your friend,” I said.
“I don’t know—I feel as if I’ve known you forever.”
“Well, we’ve grown up together, after all. So, in a way, you have known me forever.”
“We didn’t grow up together,” she said. “You only moved to Dusiat recently. You were born and raised in Vilnius.”
Then, Sarah looked right into me, as if she were trying to dig the truth from me with her eyes.
“I meant that we met at an important time in our lives—when we’ve grown from girls to young women.”
I gave up trying to get any lather out of the hard, slippery bar; I slid it over my skin and then handed the soap to Sarah. She took it and let out a little sigh.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have this funny feeling—” She seemed momentarily embarrassed.
“Go on,” I said. “You can tell me.”
“It’s just a feeling—that you know things: about the future. That you know how it is all going to turn out.”
“What do you mean—turn out?”
“The trouble.”
Of course, Sarah was right. I did know how it was going to turn out. I knew that what would happen to Sarah, to her family, to the people she knew, and later, to the Jews throughout Europe, was far, far worse than she could imagine.
“I get that feeling sometimes myself,” I said, “that it’s all preordained. That everything that is going to happen has already happened.”
I recalled my father once explaining—in that excited way he had when talking about interesting ideas—Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal return of the same: that everything in human existence and experience cycled around so that nothing, in the end, was ever really new.
Sarah smiled. “Yes, that’s it, I suppose,” she said. “It’s a bit like that feeling I sometimes get where a memory feels like a premonition. I’ll be thinking about something, remembering something that happened when I was a little girl, and then I get confused and think—no, that never happened, but I know that one day it will.”
I nodded.
“Then—you’ve had that feeling, too?” Sarah asked, incredulous.
“Maybe not exactly the same, but I feel like I know what you mean.”
Sarah leaned over the edge of the tub to place the soap in the metal dish on the floor, then jabbed her palm against the water, splashing it up into my face.
“Then I suppose you’re not the only odd one after all,” she said. “I guess we’re just two of a kind.”
“And we don’t do half badly together in the kitchen,” I said, splashing her back.
Looking across at this playful, generous, hard-working girl, flushed with the heat of the bath, my heart squeezed at the thought of what life held for her: the anguish and fear, the hardships of emigrating to an unforgiving place, decades of hard work and childbearing. The loss of her precious baby Rose. The piling up of disappointments, the hardening of her spirit. I tried to picture Darlene’s mother—the coldness, even cruelty in her eyes, the bitterness that hung about her like an odor—but was unable to. All I could see was my new friend, laughing and splashing, her brown eyes shining and beautiful and full of life.
We dressed quickly into fresh underclothes and two almost identical dresses Sarah retrieved from her parents’ armoire that were made of navy blue wool, with high necks, hems that reached to mid-calf, and sleeves that buttoned tightly at the wrists. Just as we were closing the last buttons, we heard the sound of heavy boots and voices.
“They’re here!” Sarah said, hastening to the door.
A moment later, in they burst, Sarah’s parents and four brothers. Her father was wearing a large black cap without a brim that looked like an oversized yarmulke, and a simple suit I imagined was his holiday finery. He wore a full beard streaked with gray, with short forelocks tucked behind his ears. The other men and boys also had short tufts of hair tucked behind their ears, along with similar kinds of brimless caps. Yossele was among them, his cheeks flushed with excitement. Sarah’s mother wore a headscarf and a simply tailored woolen dress like the ones Sarah and I were now wearing.
“Gut yontif!” everyone called out to each other. Sarah’s father kissed her on the head, then gave me a warm look, and smiled.
A bustle of conversation followed while coats were removed and taken into the parents’ bedroom and the new arrivals warmed their hands by the fireplace. The talk was of the afternoon service at the shul, which Sarah and I had foregone, being busy with the holiday preparations. I understood that we would attend services with the others the next morning and found myself excited at the prospect of experiencing my first ever synagogue service.
I flashed on our visit to the Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island, pictured again the bimah and the heavy candelabra that hung down from the ceiling. I wondered how the synagogue in Dusiat would compare, recalling how Mama had wanted to go to the services before Billy’s illness intervened. I also remembered how I’d found myself back at the synagogue later that night, where I’d been visited by that uncanny, remarkable vision of people dressed in old-fashioned garb, swelling around the synagogue, trudging about under some kind of unbearable weight.
Everything within me clutched, as had happened now so many times on my lonely, tumbling journey through time. Was it really possible? Had I in fact—sitting in the back seat of the taxi outside the synagogue in Rhode Island—had a premonition of here? An image of people just like those now swarming all around me? But wait, not just people, these were members of my own family! My very own relatives from long ago.
Mama, how I longed for her! How I longed to leap into her arms and shout: yes! You can go to the Jewish services—with me! Here, in our very own historical synagogue, who knows, perhaps older than the Touro. The synagogue of your mother and grandmother and great-grandmother, and all these other lively people talking and laughing and preparing for the grand feast. We could go together tomorrow! If only you were here!
My thoughts were interrupted by Sarah.
“Come on, let’s heat the water. The sun is slipping down.”
There was still an hour or so until sundown, when it would be time to light the candles. Sarah and I heated pots of water so that the rest of the family could bathe.
Sarah took the hot water out while I went to the well to fill the second pot which I then set on the fire to boil. I was grateful for the long minutes as the water heated; I was able to rest.
Yossele was the last to wash. “I don’t need a bath,” he said to his sister.
“If you promise to wash very carefully … ” Sarah replied, ruffling his hair.
“Promise!”
I sank onto the bench by the fire and allowed my eyes to close. My mind whirled with all the impressions of the day; images of gribenes and freshly baked challah and dried fish with raisin eyes danced behind my closed eyelids and I found myself sliding into sleep.
I was awoken by Sarah’s mother, a plump woman with a pretty, but oddly vacant face, who was calling out: “They’re here! The rest of the family is here!”
I jumped up to see a group of people cheerfully, noisily entering the house, taking off their coats, walking over to the fire to warm themselves. An uncle and aunt, Sarah later explained, with their three teenage children, as well as Sarah’s two older sisters, one of whom was very pregnant, and their husbands. They made their way to the table, and everyone fell silent. Sarah’s mother lit the candles; along with the other women, Sarah and I partially
covered our eyes and recited the prayer. Then, Sarah retrieved a metal container with two handles and we traipsed outside to the pump. One by one, each person filled the container and poured water over their hands, first one and then the other, and back to the first, muttering the hand-washing prayer under their breaths. When everyone had had their turn, we filed back into the house in silence. The thin man at the head of the table—Sarah’s father, whose angular face harbored interesting shadows—placed his hands on the covered challah and recited the prayer for bread. He peeled off the cloth, broke pieces from the challah and dipped them in honey, then passed them around the table.
I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything as delicious as that first bite of bread: so sharp was my hunger, so soft the bread, with its perfect chewy-smooth crust. A plate of apple slices was then passed around, along with the honey. I dipped my slice into the pot; the honey sheen glimmered like sunlight as I raised the apple slice to my lips. Those first divine tastes were the beginning of a magical evening. One course followed the next, served by the women; Sarah and I, who’d prepared and cooked most of the food, were released from serving. The food, from first to last, was exquisite. As each dish was served, the diners heaped compliments upon us, and every now and then, one or another relative would cross to where we were sitting and enthusiastically pinch our cheeks.
I’d always been a bit unadventurous in my diet, preferring to stick to familiar foods. But I surprised myself, tucking in heartily to everything that was offered—spreading salty, congealed chicken fat on my challah, sampling the chopped herring and chicken livers that arrived early in the meal. We all sipped heavy, sweet red wine from metal cups. Between courses, the entire table lifted their voices in song, delivering the ancient Hebrew prayers up to the heavens. The room flickered with a dozen candles placed in alcoves in the wall, making all the faces around the table glow.
Late in the evening, light-headed from wine and heavy-bellied with food, I looked around, suddenly detached from the proceedings. Here I was, celebrating my first ever Rosh Hashanah. I felt a sinking within my chest, as if my heart were being dragged away from its normal place.