East of Time Page 18

  ‘Very nice. Very ingenious.’ In no time I had gulped down my little feast. ‘You’ve just defeated our last hope of making a stand.’

  ‘Well, dear comrade, a living dog is better than a dead lion.’

  ‘That was all very well for King Solomon, but I can hardly see how it applies to our hopeless situation...’

  It was long past curfew. Going home was a perilous experience, and in the dark a sentry’s boots always sounded ominous. The moon I had once trusted had lately volunteered her services to the devils; she was brighter than ever, and I was convinced she had overheard my plans and would soon pass them on to the enemy. Look! Was her black streetwalker’s eye not beckoning to her new lover, the soldier?...

  My parents were already in bed — the ghetto way of combating hunger and a total absence of fuel. ‘Where were you?’ my mother asked nervously. I told them the truth; after all, they were both longstanding members of the party. Mother at once sided with Israel. I turned for support to father, the oldest revolutionary in town. All he said, to my astonishment, was: ‘One difficult day of life is worth a hundred years of glorious death.’ I turned off the light.

  Lying in bed, allowing my eyes to journey the windowpane, I took note of how the night, with her long dark hands, stacked black boulder upon black boulder until there were no more stars to be seen.

  The Law at Work

  Ours was a neighbourhood of slender people, but slender not through any inclination to diet. ‘Hunger’ was, to us, a household word. Even so, one should not try to compare our prewar hunger to the starvation that assailed us during the ghetto years. Ghetto famine was beyond the imagination even of a Knut Hamsun.

  A family might go to bed at night and wake up in their very own private morgue. At the height of our suffering, we died at the rate of some forty people a day. And yet, though it may appear unreal, our ghetto also contained a well-fed elite for whom ‘shortage’ was an alien concept — an elite who had servants and lived in proper houses, surrounded by little gardens where the air smelt of raisins and almonds and fresh green grass.

  The Blums were new neighbours, a family of four: he was a coachman, she a cleaning lady, and they had a small boy and a smaller girl. When Mr Blum was reported missing in action defending our country, his wife was left to fend for the children on her own. She was always the first in the queue to collect her weekly food-rations, and in the evenings she would come over to tell my mother of her joy in being able to feed her little ones. ‘The war will soon be over,’ she would say, ‘and my husband will come back to me. I’ll show him his kids, and he’ll take me in his arms and say, Thank you, my love, you have done well.’

  It was a black day when Mrs Blum’s weekly provisions were stolen. ‘Murderers!’ she cried. ‘Murderers! What have you done? You’ve slaughtered my children! What am I to do? Oh God, what am I to do?’

  She could do nothing. Ghetto life knew very few mercies.

  A week later, when my mother went up to the attic to hang up some washing, she found two orange enamel saucepans lying on the floor. Assuming that they belonged to someone who had been ‘resettled’, she took them home, and the same evening used them to cook some soup for dinner. Just as she was about to serve our lavish meal, Mrs Blum burst in, looked around and left without a word. Half an hour later she returned in the company of her cousin, a member of the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst, the Jewish ghetto police. Pointing to mother’s new acquisitions, she exclaimed: ‘In those I kept my children’s food!’

  I was arrested on the spot. At the watchhouse they asked me to sign a statement admitting my crime. When I refused I was tied up; then, after fifteen minutes of solid thrashing, one of my tormentors showed me the dotted line on a sheet of paper. ‘We’ll make you sign, sonny,’ he said. ‘No!’ I replied, observing his grotesque pretence at Polish, his uneasy selfassurance and his absurdly affected manner of speaking.

  In the morning I was set free. When I got home, father told me they had come to see him and had informed him that I had signed a confession. He didn’t believe them, but was ready to hand over every scrap of food we had in return for his son’s release. They had agreed — on condition that Mr Blum’s shoes, which had been stolen along with the food, be included. Father took off his only pair and offered it to them.

  But these were not the shoes in question, so they had left empty-handed.

  What had happened was this: Father had gone to see my parents’ employer for the past thirty-five years, Pinkus Gerszowski, who belonged to the ghetto hierarchy. Gerszowski had contacted the director of the factory where I worked, who confirmed my presence at work on the day of Mrs Blum’s tragedy.

  A fortnight later Mrs Blum’s provisions were stolen again. She grew suicidal and would not stop screaming. ‘What will my husband say? What will he say? Tell me, good people, what am I to do?’ Somehow, with the help of her neighbours, she made it through to the next weekly ration.

  Shortly afterwards, on a grey Monday morning when Mrs Blum had gone to work leaving her two little ones with a friend, someone stood at her door and tampered with the lock. Softly humming to himself, the thief entered, gathered into a small sack what remained of the family’s food, and was about to leave when Mrs Blum’s policeman cousin jumped out from the cupboard and knocked over the intruder — whom he immediately recognized as a young tough living in our block. ‘You’ll rot in jail for the rest of your life,’ he told him, and escorted him to the watchhouse. By dinnertime, however, our thief was back in the yard.

  How was that possible?

  Simple. His uncle happened to be the Mrs Blum’s cousin’s superior!

  Honeymoon

  Żabia 13 had once been a school of three hundred children. The Germans evicted them all, burned their books and replaced the benches with sewing-machines. Our working day began at eight and finished at six, with thirty minutes for lunch; every second Sunday we had off. The director of our factory, the police officer Kohen, was known for his cruelty and stupidity. He would lash workers with his leather belt and shower them with obscenities for downing tools five minutes before knock-off time.

  In 1902 a Bundist cobbler and activist, Hirsh Lekert, had attempted to assassinate the governor of Vilna, Von Wahl, for doing exactly what Kohen was doing. Lekert died for this endeavour, but lived on as a legend in the hearts of his comrades. Our place, however, had no Lekerts.

  The factory was set up in such a manner that no worker would be face to face with another. Twenty-year-old Adamowicz, known as Adam for short, sat in front of me. A tall, emaciated and likeable fellow, whose features would be paradise for any cartoonist, he was a frightful cynic about the holiest things in life, though not on the subject of food. Hunger made Adam cry.

  Come twelve o’clock he would grow restless, almost wildly so. ‘Soup time, soup time,’ he kept repeating in his deep baritone, and when he heard the steel barrel of steamy liquid being rolled into the factory yard, his already protruding ears pricked up, his narrow eyes lit up, and the nostrils of his oversized nose (which occupied most of his meagre face) became alive with an animal awareness. As usual, his excitement was shortlived: in vain did he search in his bowl for a chunk of potato — the thick part of the meal which our forty-year-old server, Maryla, reserved for Kohen and his associates.

  I recall the fateful day when Adam changed his tactics. Instead of being first in the queue to obtain a serving of Maryla’s mercy, he placed himself last. An unreachable treasure lay at the bottom of the barrel and he was determined to secure his share. Almost dancing with anticipation as he edged closer, Adam, his deep baritone in excellent form, assailed Maryla with the ditty of a well-known ghetto poet:

  O lady with the ladle,

  I don’t mean to bicker,

  But please, a little deeper,

  Please, a little thicker...

  Within a few days Adam’s bowl was being rewarded with twice its usual portion, and soon afterwards he told me that he was going to marry Maryla. Why, I enquired. ‘That dow
ry of hers, of course — and love, love,’ he replied. ‘At midday a pot of thick soup, at midnight a thick pot of flesh!’

  The ‘wedding’, if it took place, must have been a low-key affair. Maryla’s husband was presumed to have died somewhere in the snowfields of Russia, Adam had no siblings, and his deeply religious parents had been resettled to heaven the previous year. But news of the happy match quickly reached our all-knowing Kohen, and since his soup was no longer quite what it used to be, he decided to take remedial action. When Adam, who had always been one of the best workers in our group, received his next pay, he found to his astonishment a note advising of his impending resettlement. A similar note was inserted into Maryla’s pay. The following day Adam came to work to say goodbye. I asked him where he was going. ‘Honeymoon,’ he said, and vanished.

  When he reached his destination, they made him write a letter:

  Dear friends,

  We arrived safely, the journey was a breeze. Maryla was immediately appointed manageress in a fancy kitchen. As you can see, the dowry holds fast! And before long I’ll be meeting up with my dear parents.

  Yours, Adam

  A Reading

  Our literary meetings stood out for me like a cultural ark in the time of an anti-cultural flood. Some readers may see this as a post-ghetto illusion, for truly, how can one think of culture with death constantly knocking on the door? And yet, anyone who ever did time will know that even in prison it is possible to experience a sense of freedom. Sometimes, hope can be strongest when lying on its deathbed.

  My colleagues, like myself, had not been brought up on the Bible, so the piece we were about to hear on this occasion came as something of a novelty. ‘A genuine story, and especially a fable,’ began our reader for that evening (sadly, I’m unable to recall his name), ‘travels the oceans of time only to return to its port of departure. My story tonight is called Chosen. One could say that it is about the past, the present, and the future...’

  When we had settled into a unanimous readiness, he unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket and commenced his reading. It is not an altogether unfamiliar tale, and I’ll reconstruct it here as best I can.

  God almighty was sitting on cloud nine with His angels one day when, out of the blue (or was it the black?) there appeared his highness, the Adversary. ‘And where have you been, my boy?’ God asked him.

  ‘I have been roaming Your world, Master,’ the other replied.

  God nodded. ‘Did you happen to catch sight of My chosen? Surely there is no other community on earth like theirs — blameless, upright, charitable, their synagogues always packed, and not just on the holy Sabbath.’

  ‘Ah, well, Sir,’ sneered the Adversary, ‘they have good reason to be as they are. You provided that tribe of cobblers, tailors, joiners, weavers and little rabbis with the best of life. As it is written, Happy is the man who is satisfied with his lot. But try to deprive them of Your benevolence, and You’ll soon find out what a miserable crowd they really are.’

  ‘You think so?’ said God. ‘Let’s wager on it — I leave them in your hands.’

  So the Adversary darted back to hell, picked up his most monotonous accomplice, dull as a dirty autumn fog but more vicious than a crazy dog, and told him: ‘Take care of these so-called chosen for me.’ The diligent delegate quickly set to work. First he deprived the people in question of their livelihood, looted their homes, stole their possessions, burned down their prayer-houses, saw to it that they received pitiless beatings. Yet the community remained steadfast. ‘God has given, and God has taken away,’ they said as one. ‘May His name be blessed for ever and ever.’

  Before long the Adversary presented himself in heaven. ‘Well, what do you say now?’ remarked the Almighty with some satisfaction. ‘Have you noticed my people’s fidelity, their resolute integrity in the face of suffering and hardship?’

  The Adversary was quick to respond. ‘Sir, let me probe them deeper,’ he urged, ‘and You’ll soon get a taste of their wicked, blasphemous nature.’

  ‘They are in your hands,’ said God with a confident smile.

  So the Adversary incited his humourless offsider to herd God’s chosen into ghettos, and he appointed cruel taskmasters who tortured the people and worked them to death. Yet still the members of the condemned community stood fast. ‘Should we accept only good from God,’ they cried in unison, ‘and reject all pain, misfortune and evil?’

  Suspecting at last that he could not make these stiffnecked Jews turn against their Almighty after all, the Adversary angrily summoned his unhappy henchman once more. ‘Make soap of them,’ he commanded, ‘and let them vanish into thin air like bubbles on a windy day.’

  When the people learnt of their impending fate, they gathered in what was left of their little houses, rent their clothes, and with ash on their heads chanted:

  Perish the day when we were chosen,

  and the night it was announced

  that a holy nation had been conceived!

  ...And God, on hearing such terrible words (our reader concluded), will break down, and will utter a heart-wrenching lament, and will be ready to resign from His heavenly seat. But to His great amazement, the remnant of this wretched, illtreated people can not, will not, accept His resignation. Falling on their faces, they will implore him: ‘O Lord, master of the universe, do not abandon us. Don’t leave us completely alone in a world gone mad.’

  Yiddish Lullaby

  What a marvellous mother she was. Even those who despised her had to admit it. And if one had the privilege of looking into her large dark eyes, one was reminded of God’s light. I last saw her sitting on the shore of a silent lake, enveloped in sunset while it was still day. She sat beneath a willow tree, humming ‘Raisins and Almonds’, dreaming her bygone bliss and then, with trembling lips, the song of her life — which I understood so well because it was also mine:

  By the lake stands a tree

  The tree of a thousand sighs;

  On the tree sits a bird

  With sad, storytelling eyes.

  Suddenly we heard footsteps, a phantom braving the dark. His voice, like bowstrokes on a violin, resounded in the dusk. ‘How close to my heart is your song,’ he cried. ‘How close, wise minstrel. When you sing I hear the breeze rustle the desert sands, the song of Miriam, the steps of our forefathers walking into eternity, the murmur of the letters, the whisper of time itself.’

  She turned towards the voice. ‘Then come to me, prince of the golden verse. I am tired, and my lids are like lead. Come, tuck your mother in, for old times’ sake, and cradle her to sleep with your half-forgotten lullaby.’

  And so he did. ‘There was once a king,’ he began. ‘His queen had a garden, and the garden a tree, and the tree a nest, and the nest a little bird I loved. Aili lili-lu, aili lili-lu. Then came the wind and destroyed the nest and broke the little bird’s wings. I have no home in the east, no home in the west. Aili lili-lu, aili lili-lu.’

  As she closed here eyes I heard her say: ‘And I have no more fears but one. A time is coming when a famine will descend upon the land. Not hunger for bread, not thirst for water, but hunger and thirst for the hearing of a Yiddish word. And men shall wander from sea to sea, to seek the word, but they shall not find it...’

  Ghetto Poets

  We were six young men and one young woman. She and I would cuddle and kiss and caress, but we never actually ‘did it’. A tiny girl with dark squinting eyes, she had a seductive smile and thin, gentle, beckoning hands. For a whole year we met in her home, a small room where she lived with her sister, who had an infant girl born out of wedlock. My sweetheart would describe how, night by night, her sister and her lover would tear at each other’s flesh. ‘I wish we could go all the way,’ she said, ‘instead of just fondling each other.’

  ‘Have you thought of what might happen if we did?’ I reminded her.

  ‘I don’t care. We’re just outsiders looking in. Why shouldn’t we live for today?’

  I felt she
was right yet I couldn’t bring myself to go along. Apart from anything else, I was inhibited by the presence of the child, who was looked after by my girlfriend during the daytime when her sister was working. Eventually, after a silly but rowdy altercation, we parted company.

  A few days later, at a poetry reading under the guidance of our learned Aron Wolman, we met again. These sessions always took place in the modest home of one of my friends, a single room divided by a curtain, creating the illusion of a double apartment. I remember every stick of furniture in that flat. On the right as you entered stood an unlit stove, and on the left a large brown cupboard, to which the curtain was attached; the cupboard housed a collection of blue-bound books by Anatole France, among them the famous Penguin Island and Thaïs, which had been borrowed and read by all of us. In the centre of the room was the lame table around which we sat together. I liked my friend’s home, and I liked his quiet mother — who seemed to have stepped straight out of a story by Gorky. After we consumed the bit of dry bread each of us had brought, which for most of us was our daily meal, it was time for Wolman’s talk.

  ‘One might wonder,’ he began, ‘why on earth, in the current political climate, one should bother about the Polish– Jewish literary “osmosis”. Or, is it precisely because of our present situation that people like us are compelled to examine our literary partnership — if only in order not to be consumed by the hatred that surrounds us?’

  Wolman then briefly surveyed some of the important Jewish writers and their contribution to Polish literature: the work of Julian Tuwim, Bolesław Leśmian, Mieczysław Jastrum, Marian Hemar, Józef Wittlin, and of course the tragic Bruno Schultz. From here he deftly turned to I. L. Peretz, the great Yiddish writer who had proclaimed that foreign ideas plant foreign cultures — though this did not mean, Aron stressed, that we had to lock ourselves up in a cultural ghetto. ‘On the contrary, Peretz argued that cultural isolation led to spiritual death. We have to take and give, share each other’s spiritual heritage, yet remain Jewish. Remember,’ Wolman added; ‘a writer who forsakes his roots has no place in posterity.’