Day After Night (11 page)

Tedi started rocking again. “Don’t,” said Zorah, pushing the heavy hair away from
Tedi’s damp forehead. “Those bastards will rot in hell forever. But you got away,
didn’t you? You are far, far away from all of that. You’re safe now, right?”

Zorah put her arm around Tedi’s shoulders and held her still. “You’re in the land
of milk and honey, right?”

The sound of the party rose and fell, as though it were coming from a boat circling
the shore.

“It’s late,” Zorah said finally. “Time for bed.” She stood up, brushed the dust from
her skirt, and offered Tedi her hand.

When Tedi got to her feet, she wrapped her arms around Zorah. “Thank you,” she whispered,
surprised at the delicacy
of the fierce little woman who banged through Atlit like a clenched fist.

“No need for thanks,” said Zorah, trying to break free.

But Tedi held on until Zorah stopped struggling. And for a moment, or perhaps no more
than a fraction of a moment, Tedi was almost certain that Zorah hugged her back.

It was very late when Shayndel crept into Leonie’s cot and woke her up.

“What’s the matter?”

“David and me … I ended it.”

“What happened?” Leonie asked. “I thought you liked him.”

“I do, I mean I did, at first anyway. But I can’t take it anymore. He is only in love
with the idea of me. I make him feel important.”

“I think he has great respect for you.”

“It has nothing to do with me,” Shayndel said, “and certainly nothing to do with what
I want. He goes on and on about war like it is something beautiful and noble, which
only means he’s never seen it himself. War is hideous and it leaves you covered in
shit. I cannot kill anyone else. I will not. Not even for the Jewish state. Someone
else has to do it this time. I will work on a chicken farm and shovel manure. I will
add up long columns of numbers in an office without windows. Anything but that.”

“What does David say when you tell him this?” asked Leonie.

“He doesn’t listen. He lectures me about the duty we all owe the Jewish people and
the dream of a state. He puts his hand under my dress like it’s his right and he says
I must make sacrifices.”

“What do you mean? Did he try to take advantage of you?”

Shayndel smiled. “Hardly. We’ve been going at it behind the last barrack almost since
we met.”

“I had no idea,” said Leonie. “Good for you.”

“Not particularly,” Shayndel said. “Let’s just say he doesn’t know what to do to make
a girl happy.”

“There are ways to teach them about that. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. And
when there is real feeling …”

“You don’t have to tell me about sex,” Shayndel said. “In the forest, there wasn’t
much to do at night, and we all learned how to make each other happy. But this is
not about fooling around. It’s about him, David.

“Tonight he was completely impossible. I told him it was finished between us, and
then he laughed at me and said I had cold feet. Like I was a little girl. Like I didn’t
know my own mind! Now all I want is for him to disappear so I don’t have to argue
anymore. Tomorrow wouldn’t be soon enough. Do you think I’m right?”

“
Chérie,
if you do not love him, you are right. And it seems clear that you do not love him.”

“I guess I wanted to be in love with someone. But not him. I’m just sorry that I didn’t
tell you about him from the beginning. I felt badly that you didn’t have a boyfriend,
too. That I betrayed our little plan with the two brothers.”

“Our plan? That was more like a game, a nice little story we told each other,” Leonie
said. “Making plans is a game. Life chooses for you.”

“Do you really believe that? That we are like leaves floating on the river, wherever
it takes us?”

“This is not a bad thing,” said Leonie. “It is not a good thing, either. That’s just
how it goes.”

“So nothing makes sense?”

“How could you make sense of our lives?”

Shayndel lay still for so long, Leonie said, “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“I took no offense. I was just thinking what it would be like to keep that philosophy
in mind on Yom Kippur.”

“It is the day of judgments, no?”

“Yes. God is the judge who writes in the heavenly book who will live and who will
die in the coming year,” Shayndel said. “I wonder why I never objected to that idea.
How can I permit anyone to speak of God sitting on His golden throne and deciding
that Malka and Wolfe should be murdered, and millions of others, too? It is horrible.”

“Were they believers?” Leonie said. “Your friends?”

“They believed in Palestine and the dream for a homeland.”

“May it be so,” said Leonie, using the ancient Hebrew formula.

“I thought you didn’t know anything about the prayer book.”

“I don’t, but my grandfather used to say that. They took me to see him only a few
times when I was a girl, but when I left and I said, ‘See you again,
au revoir,
’ he would answer, ‘May it be so.’ I used to think he was joking, but maybe he was
a little serious, too. He died in his sleep, my grandfather, in his own bed, long
before the Germans marched into Paris. He was not even sixty, but now I think he was
a lucky man.”

“On Yom Kippur, everyone weeps for the dead,” said Shayndel, who had not cried when
her friends had died, nor since.

“Weeping is terrible for the complexion,” said Leonie, holding Shayndel close, “but
it is very good for the heart.”

Yom Kippur dawned overcast and muggy; it was going to be a hot day. Some of the men
got up for early prayers, but without a regular breakfast hour or roll call, nearly
everyone slept late. Tedi crept out of the barrack and walked through the quiet camp
without seeing a soul.

There were a dozen people in the mess hall, and all of them looked up as she entered.
Some raised their water glasses defiantly, showing off their disdain for the day-long
fast, but others quickly dropped their gaze. There was no tea that morning or fresh
salad, nor would there be any regular meals, but because children and the sick are
exempt from the rules of self-denial, platters of fruit and cheese and baskets of
bread had been set out, covered with dish towels to keep off the flies.

Tedi was surprised to find Zorah there. She was sitting alone, staring at an apple
on the table in front of her.

“Can I join you?” she asked, waiting for permission to sit down. They had barely spoken
since Rosh Hashanah, when Zorah had shown her such kindness.

“Suit yourself,” Zorah said. “Where is your breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry, not yet anyway. I never really fasted on Yom Kippur. In my family,
we—”

A boy stuck his head through the door and announced, “The Poles are starting Musaf.”

“What is that?” Tedi asked.

“It’s an extra service after morning prayers,” Zorah said.

“Aren’t you going?”

Zorah felt the call to prayer in her body. Her feet twitched and her heart raced,
but she had no intention of giving in to the urge. “Why should I go?” she said, as
if she’d been insulted.

“You seem to know so much about such things, the prayers, the Bible, the commentaries,
even. Some of the girls call you ‘the little rabbi.’” Tedi thought the name suited
her, given that Zorah had begun to smell like a book—an oddly comforting combination
of paste and ink and dust.

“That’s no compliment if you consider the maniacs and lost souls who care about such
things around here. Later, I’m going to have a big lunch with the Communists. Just
watch me.”

“I meant no harm,” Tedi said softly.

“Ach,” Zorah relented. “Don’t listen to me. I need a smoke, that’s all.”

Tedi and Zorah sat at the table for an hour, watching as people wandered in and out.
Only mothers with children walked
through the doors without embarrassment or apology, urging their little ones to eat
and taking sips of water when they thought no one was looking.

Zorah said, “I’m going to get some air.” She left the apple untouched and wandered
the perimeter of the camp, trying to avoid the chanting and muttering and bursts of
song. But as the day wore on, boredom and curiosity got the better of her, so as the
afternoon services began, Zorah went for a tour of the four separate observances.

The largest was held by the Poles in the promenade between the men’s and women’s barracks.
Anschel, the religious zealot, was gone, and a rabbi had been imported for the service—a
robust old man with a short gray beard; he wore a long white robe, the ceremonial
garb of grooms, corpses, and Yom Kippur supplicants.

The Hungarians met behind one of the men’s barracks, and the handful of Romanians
who chose to pray fit beneath the overhang in front of Delousing.

The Communists and Socialist Zionists got together in the shade behind the mess hall,
where they argued about whether to say any prayers at all. They agreed that formal
worship was a waste of time and a distraction; still, a few of their number wanted
to do “something.” Finally, a short Russian with the loudest voice declared, “Enough.
We can recite some words strictly out of solidarity, to honor the dead and the traditions
of the dead. We say the words, we remember, and then we get drunk and have a good
cry.”

His friends brought that phrase into the dining room, repeating it to each other as
they filled their plates and debated about how long it would take before religion
withered entirely in the new Jewish state.

Zorah walked through and sat down beside Tedi, who had not moved all day.

Lillian was there, too, nibbling at apple slices. “My people were never religious
fanatics,” she said, in a voice meant for everyone in the hall. “My grandmother used
to bake special butter cookies that she served only at tea on Yom Kippur. Her friends
from the neighborhood would come to the house. ‘Enough already,’ she used to say to
them. ‘We are civilized people, after all.’ ”

“I wish she would shut up,” Tedi whispered to Zorah.

“That will not happen until they wrap her in a shroud,” Zorah said. She pointed at
a boy sitting across the room. “What’s going on with him, the one they brought in
yesterday?”

The skinny ten-year-old had a full mouth, a piece of bread in one hand and a half-eaten
pear in the other. He was sweating and swaying in his seat.

“He’s been eating like that all day,” said Tedi.

“Someone should stop him,” Zorah said, but it was too late. He fell to his knees and
started vomiting on the floor.

Zorah shook her head. “I saw someone die from eating like that. It was the day the
British liberated the camp.”

The smell hit Tedi hard. But as much as she wanted to run outside, she felt obliged
to stay and listen to Zorah.

“They set up a feeding station with a sort of tube, filled with lukewarm gruel,” she
said. “I didn’t know the man, or who knows, maybe he was my cousin. There was nothing
left to him but eyes and bones. They carried him to this pipe and he opened his mouth,
like a bird being fed by its mother. He closed his eyes and swallowed and swallowed
until …

“No one thought to stop him. Someone said he ruptured his stomach. There were no doctors.
So many died the day after liberation. Too weak. Too sick.”

“I was never that hungry,” Tedi whispered. “I was lucky.”

Zorah turned on her. “Don’t ever say that. Don’t let anyone say that to you.”

Tedi looked like she’d been slapped.

“Ach, maybe they’re right,” Zorah relented. “Maybe it’s better not to talk of this
at all. What’s the point?”

“Exactly,” said Tedi. “What is the point?”

“I’ll tell you the point,” said Zorah. “It is unbelievable what I saw, what I lived,
what happened to you, to everyone here! The point is that nobody knows what happened,
and if we pretend it didn’t happen, then it didn’t happen and it will never stop.
People died from starvation even after they were given food because no one paid attention.
A fifteen-year-old girl jumped off the deck of the ship that carried me to Palestine,
and do you know why? Because everyone kept telling her, ‘You are so lucky. You are
young. You have cousins and uncles. Lucky girl.’ She was bleeding inside from everything
she’d been through. ‘Don’t cry,’ they told her. ‘Lucky girl,’ they told her. She jumped
into the sea.”

“Shah, be quiet.” Tedi put her hand on top of Zorah’s. “They are staring at us.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I care,” said Tedi. “I don’t want people looking at me like that. I don’t want
anyone to ask what happened to me. My memory is private. My grief is private. My …”
She searched for a way to put it. “My shame. I mean, you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Of course not,” Zorah said. “What do you take me for?”

“You see? There are times when silence is better. When we must put the past behind
us, in order to live.”

Zorah crossed her arms against her chest. “So in order to
live, we must annihilate the past? Then what about your parents? Aren’t you responsible
for their memories? If you don’t speak of them, it’s like you kill them all over again.”

Tedi was on her feet.

“I’m sorry if this causes you pain,” said Zorah. “But I am not wrong.”

“Leave me alone,” said Tedi and ran out of the room.

Zorah stayed where she was, watching as groups of people passed by the open doors
as each of the services ended. Some of them came to the door, looked inside, and then
hurried away. She picked up an apple and brushed the cool, smooth skin back and forth
against her lips. The smell made her mouth water. Her stomach rumbled. Eat it, she
told herself.

When Tedi walked back into the barrack, Shayndel called her over to Leonie’s cot,
where the two of them had passed the day, talking and napping.

“Do you want to come to the last service of the day with us?” Shayndel asked.

“Did you go this morning?” Tedi asked.

“That’s too much sitting for me,” said Shayndel. “Neilah is short, and I want to say
Kaddish for my family.”