East of Time Page 10

  ‘Grätz was not the first or the last naive sage,’ mother replied.

  Mother’s comment would come to seem like the prophecy of a Cassandra, because a week later, on the morning of the Sabbath, a distraught and bloodied Zilberszac, his face resembling a badly harvested field, fell into our room. The scene has hung in my memory like an exhibit suspended in a gallery that refused to close. My little mother, with wet towels, is bending over Zilberszac’s bulky form; father runs to and fro with buckets of water; while the victim tries to explain what happened. ‘I walked out through the gate quite early, the street was still sleeping... Out of the blue two young soldiers sprang at me... They forced me to kneel... One of them said, “I’m a master Razierer,” and took out his pocket-knife!... I begged for mercy but he took no notice...’

  All day long Zilberszac sat in our room like a silent tombstone in a forgotten cemetery. But as the evening wind began to blow out the waning daylight, and a grey cloud like a dishevelled witch appeared on our windowpane, he quietly stood up, walked to the door and, turning his face towards mother, said ‘Thanks.’

  Then, as if to himself, he added: ‘Dusk is always the harbinger of night.’

  Beginning

  And the black magician said, ‘Let there be darkness,’ and there was darkness, and he saw that the darkness was good. And he separated the darkness from the light. He called the light night, and the darkness he called day. And there was morning and there was evening, the first day of his creation.

  And on the second day he decreed that no Jew be allowed to walk on the footpath, or in the middle of the road. No Jew should be permitted to have a dog, cat, bird, money, gold, fur coat, piano, violin, mandolin, guitar, gramophone, or to breathe Aryan air. All Yiddish books and all writers who wrote in Yiddish were to be burned, their alphabet ground to dust, for one must not forget that it was a Jewish secret code, and that in each of its letters there dwelt a hidden flame that would destroy the holy darkness. One needed to watch the Jews closely, for they had an art of dreaming up dangerous schemes, their very presence and movements could modify the world.

  And then he said, ‘Let all the Jews be herded into one precinct,’ and they were herded in, and he saw that the herding was good. And there was morning and there was evening, the third day of his genius.

  At dusk, just past the curfew, we discussed our new situation. ‘What is there to do?’ someone asked. ‘We are on a road that leads to no other roads.’ Another replied, ‘They may want to kill us, but we’ll live through that as well. History is awash with butchers, yet we outlived them all.’

  I listened to what father had to say — and would not have believed that this incurable doubter was able to utter such words. ‘There is a certain freedom even in prison,’ he declared, ‘and we have to make the most of that.’ Then he related a parable, which went something like this:

  A prominent scientist once predicted the coming of a great catastrophe, a second flood that would destroy all humanity. The clergy, forever ideologically divided despite a common vested interest in the Almighty, quickly called an international conference. They advised each delegate to bring along his own God, in the hope that such a manifestation of religious fidelity might sway heaven to rescind so cruel a punishment. But as the members of the gathering were about to commence their deliberations, they were horrified to notice the absence of a single representative of the Jews. Messengers darted to and fro, but the tidings were gloomy: the Jews were not coming, and they remained unmoved. One emissary reported that, first of all, they were too busy studying how to live underwater. Secondly, they had been astonished to have been asked to bring their God — it had never occurred to them that one could carry ubiquity.

  Snow in the Window

  They were our neighbours for thirty years, yet we never knew their surname. There were no signs on our doors, and when the postman, like a town crier, called out from the yard the names on the letters he was delivering, our next-door neighbours were never among the recipients.

  To remain an unknown entity in an open community such as ours — I mean within a tenement where people never locked their doors, where the women wandered openly in and out to pursue their daily rounds — creates perhaps a most vulnerable state of affairs for the family thus shielding itself. It opens the gates to fancy, to speculation and to endless tantalizing stories. But what I am about to relate (though most of it was told to me by my mother) belongs to a world of cruel and absurd realities.

  The lady of the household was known to us as Zlata; her hunchbacked husband, an expert builder of ovens, was nicknamed ‘The Mason’. He had been twenty-three when he married his thirteen-year-old Zlata, and although the young wife had played hopscotch while her Mason was at work, by the age of twenty she had borne him five healthy daughters.

  The years sped by quickly, the girls grew up; before long they had left their teens behind. Unfortunately, none of them was married as yet. Zlata, by now well and truly up in arms, kept summoning the local matchmakers — including, in the end, the top man in the profession, the lame but learned Gavriel. Gavriel walked with a cane, was garbed in black from head to toe, wore a white straw hat on his head and, even at the height of summer, heavy galoshes on his feet.

  ‘So,’ Zlata asked him, ‘how are you going to solve this problem?’

  ‘Zlateniu,’ pleaded the arch-matchmaker, ‘life is but a dice throw. At the moment I have no one — especially for your twenty-year-old, flat-chested, anaemic-looking Sura. But give me time, and you’ll soon reap the benefit of Gavriel’s genius.’

  And lo and behold, barely a fortnight later a first introduction took place between the hapless Sura and her prospective husband, the grey-haired and balding Matis Sznabel, an expert men’s tailor. This was obviously the work of God. Matis was very fond of roast duck and baked apples, which turned out to be Sura’s specialty, and it was love at first sight.

  Mother recalled the tension that sunny midday — the nervous footsteps in our unlit corridor, the hasty shutting and opening of doors, the five sisters running into our room without asking our permission, dashing straight for the window, their excited shouts: ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!... They’re here!’ They waited anxiously for a few more minutes; then all five of them, holding aloft five open black umbrellas (a status symbol in our district), marched back into their own apartment to greet Sura’s future in-laws.

  Matis proved to be a clever and industrious businessman — a good earner with bourgeois ambitions. After nine months Sura gave birth to a boy, whom they named Sevek. They moved out of our neighbourhood, to the part of town occupied by the nouveaux riches. Sevek grew into a pleasant youngster, a good student, and a fine violinist with a love for the German classics. We would see each other during his frequent visits to his grandparents, and we became friends. Life was good to Sevek. How could this gentle seventeen-year-old suspect the barbarism that lurked within the darkest folds of the culture he worshipped.

  All this by way of a background preamble.

  On a snowy winter’s morning in mid-January 1940, two young men — dressed in black and in the company of the caretaker — entered the Sznabels’ apartment and curtly ordered them to vacate the premises and proceed to the newly proclaimed ghetto section of our town, where I still lived with my family. The Sznabels quietly obeyed, but as they were about to negotiate the staircase, the unwelcome visitors called Sevek back. They told him to sit down, face the window and watch the falling snow. For some minutes they amused themselves by engaging him in useless conversation. Then, as one of them was asking Sevek what he would like to do after the war, the other unhurriedly took out his shiny revolver and put a bullet through my friend’s head.

  For three days Sevek sat dead in his chair, his head covered with a white sheet. Sura and Matis, having moved back to our block, continued their life as best they could in the apartment next door. Four years later, along with the rest of us, they were deported to Auschwitz.

  Kaddish for a Bantamweig
ht

  Adolek Kohn lived with his widowed mother, younger brother Sholem, and a little white hen that answered to the name Dolores. The four of them occupied a one-room ground-floor apartment at Gnieźnieńska 10, where all the windows faced away from the sun. Adolek was always a great storyteller, but my favourite among all of his many ghetto tales is the one about the hen.

  ‘You know, my friend,’ he would begin, ‘Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a season for everything, but in the ghetto there was only one season: death — death from hunger, from typhus, from tuberculosis, and death from diarrhoea. Well now, diarrhoea,’ he had adopted a playful tone, ‘is of course a feminine noun, and, like most creatures of the feminine persuasion, she, for some reason, found me attractive. No sooner had she taken me to bed than my snow-white Dolores, with her coquettish little red comb and her pert little neck, took to mooning about the room like a heartbroken ballerina.

  ‘Meanwhile, Lady Diarrhoea, perhaps to spite Dolores, became almost despotic. Within one week she made me lose the use of my legs, numbed my fingers and froze my tongue. My eyes were still open, though mother was convinced I’d gone blind; but I could see her standing beside me, wringing her hands. The doctor she summoned gave me an injection, a sort of serum drawn from a dead horse which, unknown to the doctor, was infected with tuberculosis. It didn’t cure me, but it actually saved me from contracting that horrible disease. However, as things went from bad to worse, mother implored God, my brother Sholem lit candles, and people started coming over; I heard their sing-song prayers for someone about to depart the world. At dusk my temperature would climb to dangerous heights. Dolores, in order not to see me expire, hid herself under my bed.

  ‘One evening I heard a gentle rustle on the windowpane above my bed, as gentle as the touch of a lost kitten’s paw. It was the angel of death. “Are you ready, Adolek Kohn?” he asked, not unpolitely, and not without a hint of irony. “Don’t tarry, for I am very busy. It’s peak season for departures in the ghetto.”

  ‘All at once, Dolores — not like a chook but more like a predatory eagle, her white plumage ruffled, her wings outspread, her sharp beak greedy for combat — sprang from under my bed and swooped upon the intruder. That a hen can be aggressive and can fight is well known, but never had I witnessed such a feathery commotion. The angel of death must have decided I wasn’t ready after all, for he seemed to have withdrawn. And next morning (I swear it), when my mother looked under the bed, Dolores stood up to reveal a fresh egg she’d been sitting on. She appeared to be saying: “Please, take it for your son, whom I love.” The following morning there was another egg, and in the afternoon yet another. This went on for some days, and it was those eggs which put me back on my feet! I know it sounds unbelievable, but that’s the way it was.

  ‘After I recovered, Dolores followed me around like a puppy. If I sat down to read, she would make herself a little nest next to me. Once, when I touched her, I was sure there was a tear of gratitude in her button eye.

  ‘Our next-door neighbour, an elderly gentleman, was convinced that Dolores was a gilgul, probably a tzaddik incarnate. When she passed away, he came to offer his profound condolences. “Adolek, you ought to say Kaddish,” he solemnly advised me...’

  Having finished his story, in a tone that always brought back the snow to my sunny window, my friend would sit back in his chair. ‘What I have told you might give the impression that facts have been sacrificed to, shall we say, myth. Not at all. It’s just that this incident was so wonderfully bizarre, and outside what we think of as “logical”. So why, like a fool, do I keep telling and retelling it, over and over again? Not only because I took the advice of my wise old neighbour, that Dolores deserved Kaddish, but also to remind people that there were those who, although convinced that they had been created in God’s image, did not even live up to the nobility of a little hen.’

  A Song of Books

  Books were the pride of a Jewish home. Seldom could a Jewish dwelling be found without at least a small library: Tanach (Bible) and Talmud, some prayer-books, and a few volumes of scriptural commentary. At the dawn of the twentieth century, our everyday spoken Yiddish was transformed by the flowering of a new literary Yiddish and this became the major cause of a mind-boggling harvest of books — books of wisdom, philosophy, poetry, history, art, science. Before long, the literary tongue had become the medium for hundreds and thousands of alluring translations of the Russian, French, German and English classics, opening the door, for the Yiddish reader, to a new sense of belonging, a whole new consciousness and sensibility.

  On 12 February 1940 the skies swirled with grey clouds and white snow. At daybreak, from every corner of the city of the waterless river, came the Jews. They trudged obediently through terrain bleached white by the weather, trod behind little carts packed with their possessions, towards the ghetto that had been established for them by the Germans.

  As I stood on the kerb observing the procession of mourners behind hearses bearing their own lives, I noticed a man on the opposite side. He seemed frozen to the spot. He had three small children and a woman beside him, her face a tapestry of murdered dreams. They stood defeated next to a broken-down cart. I offered my help, and together along the slippery cobbles we pushed their crippled wagon, tilting on one wheel and loaded with the family’s past. And of course, there were books; many, many books.

  Within an hour we were well-acquainted. Michael Rosz was in his late forties, tall, with brows so thick I could hardly make out his eyes. He was an educated man, an avid reader of both scripture and modern Yiddish literature. ‘I was once a successful textile manufacturer,’ he told me in a whisper so intense that he might have been imparting a state secret. ‘We lived well, but what awaits us now only God can know.’

  The road grew weary, our footfall heavy, and daylight longed for a rest. As we pushed the cart onwards I experienced something rather strange: I thought I could hear voices coming from among the books! The fatigue must have really got to me, for I was sure I could even hear them arguing and conversing together...

  The Roszes were allotted a little hut in the yard of a tenement block. It was cramped and cold, and its roof was in need of repair, yet they were grateful. I helped them to unload their fine furniture, stacking some items on top of others, and left them to settle in. Over the months that followed I became a frequent visitor. On many an occasion I assisted Michael in chopping up the once-treasured pieces of his household to feed his sooty black stove.

  The end of the year brought another sharp winter. The temperature fell to 18 below zero. Michael was bedridden, there was snow everywhere, but no bread and nothing left for the cold black monster, which hadn’t been lit for weeks. Michael’s desperate wife kept eyeing the books. ‘Don’t,’ the sick man pleaded. ‘Don’t. A Jew who burns books might as well burn himself.’

  ‘But some of them are damaged.’

  ‘Books are living things,’ Michael insisted. ‘When they are injured they must be cared for. If they’re beyond help, they have to be given a proper burial. Cremation is out of the question.’

  Before long the Roszes received their ‘wedding card’, or resettlement notice. I went to say goodbye. Although Chaim Rumkowski, the ghetto Eldest, assured them that they would be better off where they were headed, Mrs Rosz wept bitterly. Overnight their hut had become a palace. But there was nothing they could do, their fate was sealed. As we embraced, Michael whispered, ‘If you can, please take care of my books.’

  I was never to see the Rosz family again.

  A few days later, after dusk, I revisited their sad-looking hut. It seemed alive with an eerie emptiness. The books were strewn all over the dirty floor, some of them with pages torn out. I sat down amid the wreckage of my friend’s precious library, and I must have dozed off, for I fell into a vivid dream.

  Out of a battered volume of Sholem Aleichem, a heartbroken Tevye emerged. Throwing his arms apart, he shouted: ‘We are burning, burning!... The flames!’ At that moment I knew pre
cisely what had happened to Michael, his wife and their three children.

  I awoke with a jolt. It was almost midnight. ‘Time to go,’ I said to myself.

  But as I touched the door, I imagined I could still hear Michael’s torn-up Tevye, calling from the floor: Take me with you, please, take my song. Sing it to those who don’t see, sing it to those who won’t know...

  To Immortalize a Beggar

  Our neighbourhood was a fascinating gallery of characters, but if asked on whom I would bestow my first prize for sheer originality, I would choose the learned and pious beggar whom we called Shulem the Prince. Shulem was a rich man who became a pauper overnight. If you enquired how, he would respond, with an almost hidden grain of bitterness, that it was Satan’s doing. ‘And yet I am much better off than Job,’ he would continue. ‘I still have six hungry children at home, and a little wife standing next to her frozen stove, awaiting a miracle.’

  Since he had no profession, Shulem took it upon himself to become a beggar. He quickly turned into the most respected beggar in our city. For one thing, he never begged on Mondays and Thursdays; on those two days, like most pious Jews, he fasted — because Monday was the day when Moses had ascended Sinai, and Thursday the day when he had come back down.

  Since he was a particularly methodical man, Shulem’s professional itineraries were well mapped out. He never visited the same home twice in the one week, and he knew exactly how much to expect from each household — so planning his expenditure was a breeze. The first twenty groshen he received he always put aside for tzedakah (charity), in aid of a school for disadvantaged boys. To Shulem, charity was of paramount importance in life. Without charity, he declared, the whole world would, God forbid, come to an end.