"Displaced Persons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Schwarz Ghita)

The Bremen Zone

PAVEL WANTED TO THROW himself into something that would make him full. The trading was not enough. He tried to busy himself by attending the committee meetings of the Jews in the camp. The men had noticed that the younger refugees, the boys of fifteen or sixteen, were terribly ignorant. Could not they begin classes of some kind, something to make up for the time these children had lost? Were there no teachers among the survivors? Someone had volunteered to make a search some days before, and Pavel had not paid so much attention. But as he cycled with Fela home from the camp, he had an image of himself sitting with Chaim in their garden, teaching him all that he knew. Three days later, Pavel presented the boy with a stack of papers fastened with a clip.

Chaim, he said, blowing on a cigarette after his coffee. How old are you?

Ah, said Chaim. Fourteen or fifteen, I believe.

You believe? said Pavel. You look younger. Don’t you remember when you were born? Let us see-in 1939, were you-

Pan Pavel, said Chaim, no. You are right. I am fourteen, and my birthday will be next May.

And what of your father? He put you in kheyder, of course? How long was it before you were-

No, said Chaim, suddenly flustered. We-I went for some time, but-we-my father-he believed in the Bund-

But Pavel had already made his decision. Whether Chaim was a good student or no before, now things would be different!

Chaim was stammering. It’s that our family was not so-

All right, Pavel interrupted-everyone had secrets to keep, and who was Pavel to interfere with a child’s desire to hold his past to himself? All right. Well, in any case, it is the time, a little late, of course, but around the time, that you begin to prepare to become a bar mitzvah. It’s time to learn. I suppose you learned something in your family of Hebrew, even without-

Something, said Chaim, softly. A little, I could recognize, of course, but not-

Not enough, no. Never enough. I’ll teach you, my friend. Nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, Pavel lied, I was very slow with Hebrew myself.

CHAIM SAT DOWN TO Fela’s dark bread and soup of boiled meat. He would not look at Pavel. He would eat slowly, in silence. Still his body began to feel heat, as if it knew a discomfort and pain were coming. Why should Chaim obey? He bent to his soup, taking each sip like a medicine. He felt a needle begin to move inside, ready to become a knife, thrusting inside him, carving names into his guts. He would not look at Pavel, but when he glanced at Fela he saw her eyes turn down to her plate, afraid to meet his gaze. A twinge of shame pushed through him, then an ugly gratitude that made him angry. Who were these people to him, making a false family, false home? Who were they? He had a sudden image of the raincoat that Pavel had brought home for Chaim, a proud trade he had made, and Chaim wanted to leap up from the table and slash the coat into tiny pieces, until nothing remained but a pile of collar, pocket, useless squares of cloth. There was only so long he could contain his fury.

The soup trickled into his stomach. He took an English class each week, but it was not enough to give him a purpose or an escape. Perhaps a routine would help him leave the house, make his own life. He had inquired, without real interest, into work or training, among the aid workers. Perhaps that was his way out.

AFTER A MONTH IN the camp print shop Chaim accustomed himself to the operation of the large and ancient ink machine that rolled out the camp newsletter, little stories reviewed by the soldiers to ensure they carried no news of riots, protests, arrests. Death notices of the refugees were permitted. Also lists of names of the living, announcements of departures. Bundles of young people had already been let out to temporary homes in Britain and France, to be rehabilitated until-but until what no one yet knew.

His hands turned a dark blue-black every evening as he read through the lists before the ink on the pages was dry, the names rubbing off on his clothing and skin. Each week young men and an occasional young woman or two gathered in the early evenings outside the shop to pick up the new pages, skipping over the drawings on the front page, the poems on the second page, fingers running up and down the lists, eyes squinting, hands folding the short pages and then reopening, rereading. He watched them searching for a last name that meant something to them, a town in which someone had a cousin, a patronymic that sounded like a past neighbor’s, borrowing pens from one another as they circled clues.

He continued to attend his English class in the children’s school barracks, and Chaim left his post early on Tuesdays to make sure he found a seat close to the front of the room. One evening a man from the print shop came trotting after him as Chaim crossed the threshold. A young woman named Rayzl Traum had submitted an advertisement to the camp paper. The printman had written the advertisement and stopped at the last name, questioned her. She had a young cousin Chaim before the war.

The children were finishing their lessons, the teacher outside the room, waiting as they wrote the last sums of the day. From the doorway Chaim saw the small ones copying the scrawls from the blackboard into their slim notebooks. Then he turned his face to the printman’s feet, his heavy brown shoes.

I had a cousin Rayzl before the war, Chaim answered.

HE REMEMBERED HER. RAYZELE. Now she was plump, filled with a rageful kind of cheer, another one who wanted to blot out the past, march forward. Their fathers were brothers. She held him close to her chest and breathed into his hair when she saw him.

They sat on a bench near the print shop, and he waited for her to tell him what she knew. But she did not say a word, instead looked at him directly in the eyes, as if to send out her message without speaking. Perhaps she waited for him to ask. But he did not want to know. Perhaps it was a family trait, to know and not to say, to write quietly in notebooks, as his father had done in his job as a translator-was that his job?-yes, of course, he had tutored Chaim in the Yiddish letters before Chaim could understand the words he read, of course that was his work, was Chaim forgetting these things already?

After a moment, he said, Where do you sleep?

Not here, she said. I live on a Zionist kibbutz, a new one they started a few kilometers south, on good farmland. So we don’t have to depend on ration cards, like little prisoners again. We prepare for these British-her mouth turned fierce-to let us out of here, to let us into our homeland. Come with me there. You can smuggle yourself out of the camp. It’s an hour’s drive from here.

I-said Chaim-I have a place, not in the camp-I thought you could stay with us-

But she hesitated. They expect me back this evening, she said. And you-already you have missed convoys they let into Palestine. You are young enough to be an orphan-why did you not go on the list?

I don’t know, he said. I am here, I live with-I have a warm place in a home until-I take English lessons-

English! cried Rayzl. To be a stranger in a strange land again! A Bundist, just like your father, refusing Palestine for class politics? Look how it helped him! And since when do the English let you into their country, or the Americans either? English!

CHAIM CAME TO THE house in Celle and lay down on the sofa. He bent his arm over his eyes to block out the remaining afternoon light, and he saw an image of his mother, her own elbow bent at her brow to cover her eyes, yes, once he had seen his own mother lie down like this, perhaps after the first action or perhaps at a different time, at some terrible news or another, he did not remember, saw only her thin body outstretched on the cot in the ghetto apartment, no, it must have been after, long after his brother had been taken-and the image itself made Chaim tear his own arm from his forehead, curl his body into a ball, sob.

After some time he opened his eyes and stared at the wall, covered with floral paper. He did not want to touch it, the false decoration of a home in which he lived as a strange guest. Sometimes he brought one of the young men he had met from outside the print shop to stay in the house, just to feel himself not so alone. But Lazar had not liked to sleep there more than one night at a time, even with the use of a clean sink and the promise of Fela’s pastries. And suddenly Chaim too wanted to escape the little house, the little town, the questions that would surely come tearing at him in the evening as Fela laid out the food on the garden table. He did not want to see them. He wanted to escape every familiar face he saw, every reminder of something he knew. He wanted to be a stranger, completely alone, a newborn, learning new images and new faces.

He pushed his legs out of the house and took Fela’s bicycle toward the camp. On the main road he saw a group of British driving to the Bremen zone, a small island of American soldiers.

“Work,” he said, smiling, flashing his identity card. “I have work in the harbor.” They let him into their truck.

The rubble still covered wide areas near the port, but a few businesses and houses had been rebuilt, and in a small café near one of the piers he sat alone and watched the Americans in civilian clothes flirt and drink with the German women. Two black soldiers walked past him, talking in soft voices too low for him to hear. They were always together, in groups, and it was understood they had their own brigades, separate from the others. He followed their faces as they walked, stared openly at them. They did not seem to notice. In the American zone in Austria he and Fela had passed a camp, but their driver, a Jew, had warned them not to enter, for the Americans forced the Jews to live and work with the Ukrainians and Poles and Latvians. Americans do not separate, the truck driver had said. They say that was what Hitler did! The driver had laughed. Everyone saw the Americans too made divisions. The British did not permit the camp newspaper to publish any stories about the military, but on the radio could be heard the stories of the skirmishes among the Americans, the Negro soldier left beaten on the street, the white soldiers protesting shared meal tables. When Lazar had been liberated, a brigade of Japanese from America had marched into his camp, frightening some inmates who thought the war had been lost to the Axis. Lazar laughed about it now, he confided to Chaim, but even he had been confused. But one could not be confused when one saw a black soldier. A black man was American, immediately recognizable for who he was, a symbol of freedom. When Chaim had first come to Germany, his heart had still jumped at the sight of a uniform, any uniform-but after the momentary shudder he knew to feel relief at the glimpse of a dark face, for he could see at once that these men were Americans, liberators.

Now in Bremen, Chaim sipped his coffee, feeling it spread through his chest. Towns people bustled away from him. Even with his clean clothes and straight hair, he felt himself recognized. What was it? Perhaps his face gave out the light of accusation when a German hurried down a street of the American zone, carrying bread or holding a child’s hand. Or perhaps-yes, he knew it-they could see the fear, a look he no longer had the confidence to hide. Towns people could see who he was, could see through the calm mask of a young man idling, their quick glances registering German from refugee. For a long time he had forced himself to forget the faces of his family, the names of the companions with whom he had fled the ghetto. His talent for disguise had erased the fear from his face. But now it seemed that fear revealed itself like a caption below a photograph. Now it seemed he could be named.

M Y DARLING SISTER. A letter came from Fela’s sister in Palestine, the diminutives and nicknames falling off the page in Yiddish, mixed with the Hebrew that Bluma, so smart, so clever, now spoke every day. Bluma had heard nothing. She too had been writing to the synagogue in their hometown, to HIAS and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for word of sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, cousins. Bluma had heard nothing until the short letter from Fela, her dear one, her beautiful sister.

Fela wept as she read her older sister’s letter. What chain was more strong than the chain to a sister, even one whom she had not seen since childhood, when Bluma had defied their father and left? Flesh of the same flesh. Bluma had gone to gymnasium when no Jewish girl in their town could dream of it-the eldest, Pnina, had gone to work to support Bluma’s schooling, expensive even when the family store had prospered. And what had Bluma learned among the other students? She had picked up ideas, become a socialist, and at last joined a group of young Zionists and sailed off. It had been terrible at the time, the horror of her father and mother at the rebellion of their most gifted child, but now it seemed wise, prophetic.

Two sisters, one chain. And yet the relief that Fela felt when she opened Bluma’s letter, the gratitude for a word from her blood, my darling sister, did not fill her. It was as if she were still starving and given just a morsel of bread to eat. She longed to see a family face in the refugee camp, longed to read even a distant cousin’s name on a list of survivors. She longed for Moshe, the touch of him covering her, his breath like a blanket to warm her. Fela too had defied her father when she ran away, in the first weeks of the bombing, when it was still possible to flee to White Russia. But it was not for politics that she had disobeyed.

Thanks to Pavel’s trading, Fela now had clean clothes and an adequate amount of food; the bloating in her legs and belly had subsided; she looked almost as she once did, and she had begun to menstruate again. But the ache hadn’t left her. Now that her body could do more than subsist it began to remember other pains, not just hunger or fear. Once, cycling down the street with Pavel, she thought she saw Moshe, and as the small man with his brown curls and calm eyes had come closer, her neck had tensed, as if they were together, at night, he about to touch her. It wasn’t him, of course; she saw that a moment after the constriction in her abdomen stopped. But now the face of the man in the street, the man who was not Moshe, became something she longed for, a reminder of the face she had loved and was beginning to forget. But she didn’t see him, the false Moshe, again.

When she gave away her ring to the smuggler who took them across the border into Germany, she gave away her last clear picture of her love, the image she had of him twirling it on her finger, round and round, as she became too thin to wear it securely. Before then, she had sold a watch stolen from her father when she and Moshe had run away, she had traded the leather finery hidden in the house by her mother, but she had not let the ring leave her body. She had kept it close to her chest, under her clothing, after the news had come from a neighbor’s wife that Moshe, kidnapped into the Russian army, had disappeared, after the baby, born prematurely with the shock of her grief, had withered from dysentery, dying from the sickness in her milk, after her flesh had vanished from a hunger so strong it crushed the grief. Now that her grief was back, the ring was no longer with her. She did not need it. It was the last thing she had from Moshe, yet when the time came she had not hesitated to rid herself of it. Some part of her thought that if she gave it up, she would find him alive. Some part of her wanted to blot out any piece of him that remained in the physical world in order to keep him to herself, inside her, whole.

They were all in her now. She got up from her cooking twice, leaving a pot simmering as she went to her room to read Bluma’s letter again. Already she knew it by heart, and still it said the same thing, over and over again. I have heard nothing. Fela’s letter had been posted by the British soldiers, thanks to Pavel’s dealings. Bluma had received it, and she had received no other.

That night Fela could not play cards. Chaim was away, on an outing to the mountains for the refugee boys. Fela sat silently with Pavel in the garden, tapping her coffee cup. Then she got up, went into the kitchen. In the early weeks in the house she had found a lightweight cigar box. The box held eighteen loose cigarettes, not so stale that they could not be enjoyed. She returned to the garden with the box.

Let us try them, she said to Pavel.

They passed the first one back and forth, touching each other lightly as their arms stretched across the little table. They were used to American cigarettes now, bought on the black market, but these had a softer taste, unfiltered but still not as strong. They lingered over the one between them, taking care not to let any tobacco fall out from the crumbling paper.

After a few moments she let her knuckles graze his palm and then his forearm, bare but for the blue mark above the wrist. He moved his hand to her hair, as if to smooth it. But then he moved it away and instead touched her face, his fingertips at her cheekbones and lips. She felt a familiar chill inside her ribs but said nothing, looked down, then got up to clear the coffee cups from the garden table. At the door to the kitchen, saucers in hand, she turned.

Come with me, she said.

He followed her into the kitchen, stood away from her as she washed the cups. Then they went into his bedroom and slipped under the blankets fully clothed, undressing each other lying down, without looking.

FELA AND PAVEL WALKED arm in arm near the port. They had taken the train to the Bremen zone, where American soldiers stood on the docks to monitor shipments of coffee, flour, sugar, canned meats, used clothing, new wool, tin appliances, metal pans, medical bandages, syringes, pills, and serums. From Bremen a first wave of refugees had already sailed for Australia.

Australia! Pavel had said. These people, no patience! We, my friend-he squeezed Fela’s arm-we will wait for America.

She did not answer. The Americans did not give visas. But Pavel was convinced. Americans have know-how, he would say. They respect it in others.

But she saw differently. In the Bremen zone the young American soldiers walked with German women, the widows or their daughters, desperate for a bite to eat from a man with power. On a corner near the piers she saw a redhead in a green uniform laughing and loud, poking at a plump German girl who gave a forced laugh herself. The Americans looked cold and large to her. They called and they joked, the young boys lumbering and wide, with open faces that in a moment might turn on the small fearful people who crossed their path.

She looked carefully as she stepped into the street. A man and a woman were bicycling along the curb, coming toward them, wobbling on the cobblestones. A flash of black hair waved out from beneath the woman’s gray scarf. The man rode a little ahead of her, turning his head to the right and the left, vigilant. Fela stared at the man’s face as it came closer, the pointed chin and broad cheekbones, and felt her breath pull down into her abdomen and her heart knock inside her as she stared, blinked, squinted, to make sure she saw what she saw. It was Moshe, it was her love, on a bicycle alongside another woman, and his face stared back at her with a look of shock and something else-joy? an emotion she could not name in that moment-he leapt off his bicycle, letting it clatter to the street, his mouth opened, and she felt her arms move to her sides, her body small and terrified as he cried:

Pavel!

Already Pavel had stopped, his hand covering his mouth, the other outstretched as his friend came to grab it and embrace him. At last Pavel murmured, Fishl, Fishl. I thought-I had heard such things from there-I thought never-

Fela stood still, her hands cold, blood rushing back to her face. She breathed in and out, looking at the two men. And now she saw-the sloped eyes of Pavel’s friend were brown, not green, his compact body was broader, his hips less narrow. How could she have thought? The men were embracing and pulling away, looking at each other’s faces, embracing again.

So-are you not to speak to your wives anymore? It was the woman speaking. She had leaned her own bicycle against a brick wall, then picked up Fishl’s and nestled it against hers.

My wife-said Fishl-Dincja-Pavel-

Pavel stepped back, gave a grave smile. And this is Fela.

She stretched out her hand to the woman’s.

Fela was in Russia, Pavel continued. Siberia, then-

Fela interrupted. Siberia.

The other three began speaking at once. Towns, camps, post-liberation hospitals. Pavel stopped for a moment at the name of one camp. My sister, he said to Dincja. I heard she had gone there after we lost contact-Hinda-Hinda Mandl.

I knew a Hinda, said Dincja. Small, with brown eyes, not so large as yours, yes? Broad forehead. We were in the same barracks there.

Fela watched Pavel’s hand cover his mouth again.

They went east, most of the women there. Sent east after-I saw a friend from there a month ago-my friend was liberated in Landsberg by the Americans. You should write to her.

God in heaven, whispered Pavel. God in heaven.

They stood silent for a moment. Then Fishl said, How happy I am to see you, my friend. We thought of going to Australia. But now we are on the list for America -

You got on the list?

I got on the list. Fishl threw a look at his wife. Dincja has an uncle in New York -it is the only way, my friend, everything else is closed.

New York, repeated Pavel. There was an uncle.

She has an uncle, nodded Fishl. And I had stones to help the paperwork along. It was a match.

I have not-Pavel glanced quickly at Fela, then looked away-I have not yet-

Ah, said Fishl, nodding. They embraced again.

Fela watched the men, a veil of sweat cooling on her brow. Pavel did not look at her.

WHAT STONES? SHE SAID later, on the journey back to Celle. Pavel was looking out the window as the train rattled past the German towns.

He meant money, answered Pavel. Fishl was always a good trader. He found someone to help him with the papers. We should do the same.

Fela did not respond.

But first, Feluchna, I write to Landsberg. I feel, I have a feeling. He took Fela’s hand into his lap without looking. Perhaps Hinda is alive.

Pavel, said Fela. But then she kept quiet.

I had six brothers and sisters, said Pavel. Now I am one. But perhaps we are two. He was stroking her palm with his fingers. Two is a stronger number than one.

Two is a stronger number than one. It was true. Still she did not speak. Who was to say that Moshe, even if he was alive, did not think the same thought, did not find his own new woman to make a wife, to sail to Australia or Sweden or, God in heaven, South America? She was stupid, stupid, refusing to accept, wanting to interrupt Pavel’s thoughts and say, I still look too. I still look too. But she was sure he knew what she thought. She was sure he knew she still waited.

She leaned her head against his shoulder, feeling the gesture itself was a lie to Pavel, a theft from Moshe. A chill of anger at both of them, at everything each wanted to take from her, rose in her face. She and Pavel now slept every night in the same bed, and she wanted her solitude back, the loneliness no one watched, the privacy of grieving.

Go, she said. Go yourself to Landsberg.

Will you not come with me?

No, she answered. We will be two in the house, myself with Chaim. We are two. The poor boy should not be alone. Go. Take your bicycle.

He looked at her, eyes almost begging, scanning her face for an explanation. His hand went to his breast pocket, tapped at his chest, touching, Fela knew, the cloth that protected his photographs.

Go, she repeated. Pretend I am with you, a bit ahead of you. Pretend. But go.

PAVEL FOUND HIMSELF AWAKE in the night, no dream to remember. Fela slept next to him, breathing quietly, and Chaim, his things in a neat pile in Fela’s old room, would not return from his trip for at least another day. He got up to open his drawer and look inside. He did not dare take the stones out of the pouch. If she knew what he had, if she knew how he had it! But was it such a crime? Perhaps if he had come across the men now he would have stopped himself, he would have felt sickened at what he had, jewels taken from the murdered-but then he had been in a different world-and even then there were certain things-terrible things-that he had not permitted himself to do, not even in the most desperate of moments. And if he and Fishl had not taken, who would have had the stones instead? No, dirty gold and stolen gems had helped him take her into a home, make a warm place for Chaim. Now it could help him find his own. He still had a number of silver bracelets to leave with her, along with the money he had saved from trading.

He fingered his parents’ pictures in their brown envelope. If he should find Hinda-he dared not think it even-if he should find her, he would show her what he had preserved-no, he would not think it.

He should tell Fela about the stones. He should give them to her for safekeeping. But even as the thought moved through his head, he wrapped his parents’ pictures in a paper and slipped them inside the velvet pouch of diamonds.

I will carry them both, he thought.