East of Time (25 page)

On a bright morning in the autumn of 1941, a black limousine whose occupants included two uniformed members of the Gestapo drove into our street. Without a word, they handed over to the Sonderkommando, the special unit of the Jewish ghetto police, a large, tall, outlandish-looking man dressed in a navy-blue suit, white shirt, red tie with matching breastpocket kerchief, and polished black shoes. In his right hand he
carried a brown leather suitcase of a kind never seen in our neighbourhood, and across his left arm was draped a beigecoloured trenchcoat.

Our first meeting took place when the new arrival, plagued by a nagging hunger (to which we seasoned ghetto-dwellers were quite accustomed), asked for advice about how to exchange his trenchcoat for bread. He found it difficult to fathom the pushy locals, their skill at queuing up for food, their corrupted German tongue, their unrelenting Sisyphean struggle for life. When I tried to explain to Herman, who was twice my age, a few facts about ghetto life and ghetto people, he cut me short. ‘There is nothing to defend,' he said. Well, there was; but he — the once debonair gentleman, with an air suited to his former standing in society, forced unexpectedly to dwell in a dim room with a leaky roof, who hung about the public kitchens or walked around like a lunatic, in vain searching the gutters for a forgotten potato-peel — he could not or would not understand.

About a year later, the black limousine once again drove into our street, picked up a resigned, sallow-faced Herman without ceremony, and drove off. This event coincided with the ongoing process of ‘resettlement', so we assumed that the proud citizen of the great capital to the west would go the way all Jews were condemned to go. But to my pleasant surprise, just days later Herman was chauffeured back into our street. That evening I found him weeping on his bed. He was delirious — perhaps he thought he was dying. After a while he settled down, his Germanic Yiddish grew clearer; as I listened, a picture of the man's past was coming to life.

‘I was born in 1900, into wealth,' he began. ‘My father, a respected international merchant, decorated with the Iron Cross for his valour during the Great War, was a man of great benevolence and built many hospitals all over Germany. My
mother was a well-known doctor. We lived in a palace, I was sent to the best schools, our library was one of the finest in Berlin, I loved reading and writing. We considered ourselves Germans, without asking our neighbours what
they
thought of us. At the age of twenty-two I married the most beautiful Aryan woman in the land; my two daughters — born, in accordance with my wife's wishes, in Spain — are fine young ladies, they haven't stopped lobbying for my release from this place. They are all so beautiful, so amazingly beautiful,' and he pulled out a tattered photograph. ‘No, my loyal wife hasn't forgotten her husband, nor my children their father; last month they saw the Spanish ambassador — after all, my daughters were born in Spain, so an audience was granted. But when they saw me, my dear wife fainted and the girls couldn't stop howling. They kissed the boots of the guards to let me go. The guards told them, “You're behaving like Jews!” but they couldn't stop crying, my heart was shattered into little pieces. No, friend, I don't want to live, not any more. It's all so stupid,' he whispered, ‘so incredibly stupid.'

The following morning a strange quiet hung about Herman's room, almost a frozen hollowness. I feared the worst, and I was right. As I came closer, I noticed a slip of paper with my name on it. ‘Friend,' the note read, ‘if you survive, please tell my story.' And below that simple message, a few more lines scrawled in a shaky German hand:

I lived in many worlds

Few of them my own,

Everywhere in exile

Everywhere alone.

 

 
Lipek's Irony
 

Lipman Biderman, whom his friends called Lipek, was a remarkable young man. I had known him from childhood. We had gone to the same kindergarten, often shared a desk at school, belonged to the same youth movement, read the same books. There were no secrets between us, and much of our free time we spent in each other's company.

Lipek was a well-built youngster with straight shoulders, a pitch-black mane that topped an elongated face, and a few freckles around his shapely nose. Two dark rings under his lower lids emphasized the slightly melancholic look in his stark black eyes.

There was a rare harmony between Lipek's mind and tongue, and he had an extraordinary way of expressing himself. His favourite mode was irony. Irony, he would explain, has many faces; you have to pick the one that fits you best, otherwise you'll appear a caricature. Lipek was regarded as a paragon of discourse among his peers, and I can't recall him ever pressing an argument that didn't make sense.

Once, in a political discussion just before the beginning of the war, I had heard him remark: ‘Time is both eternal and ephemeral; one has to be an inventor to use it prudently.' And he continued: ‘Time has its own furtive agenda — more than once in our history it has surprised not only its denizens but its very self.' One of the group couldn't resist wondering out loud: ‘And what locality, sir, has the honour of claiming
you
as a denizen?' ‘Paradise,' the answer rang out (Lipek was just sixteen); ‘I dare say there is no substitute for the inevitable.' He didn't know how prophetic that answer was.

As the vulgar vortex took full control of our lives, and our world of speculative illusion was replaced overnight by bitter reality, I revisited my friend, by now confined to his bed. We'd
not seen each other for some time. He had a dry, hoarse cough and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘At sunset my temperature rises,' he said. ‘To keep me warm, of course.' Noticing that I had spotted a copy of Thomas Mann's
The Magic Mountain
by his bedside, he observed: ‘You've no doubt read it — the Mountain of the Dying, where life's glee is a waning ember and where all dreams end in fever. I hope one day to be there, to sit like Hans Castorp in the subtle shadows, inhaling the wisdom of the Renaissance man Settembrini, and then to lie with a smile between the breasts of the beautiful Clavdia. Do you know how often I've imagined Clavdia's budding virtues...?'

But it was not to be. One winter evening, as my friend's temperature rose, two uniformed men entered Lipek's apartment. His mother pleaded with them to let her son remain at home. They dragged him out of bed and handed him over to the thugs to whom they swore allegiance. At the break of dawn, while the gods were still snoring under their sky-blue eiderdowns, Lipek, renowned paragon of our youth, was marched off to a desolate place and shot.

 

 
Promise
 

Nisek Golusz, known for his infectious laugh and effervescent personality, had been the most promising student in our school, a favourite with teachers as well as classmates. An exceptionally well-read teenager, by fourteen he was already at home with the French and Russian classics, and according to all predictions was a future professor of literature.

At school we were never very close: maybe because we belonged to two different economic strata, or perhaps because he lived in what was essentially a non-Jewish district — but
more than anything because his intellectual horizons were so much wider than mine.

Even as children, the gulf in our awareness of the world had been immense. I still recall the freezing winter's morning in January 1933, when ten-year-old Nisek arrived at school with tidings whose seriousness none of us youngsters understood. ‘Germany,' he had announced, his voice grave with foreboding, ‘has elected a new Chancellor.'

Yet as the little Austrian usurped ubiquity, as his creepers entangled our walls in the high season of the absurd, while cut-throats in unlit corners lay in wait and searchlights kept morality at bay, our friendship blossomed and we began to spend time together. Once, as we walked arm in arm with our heads bare on the holy Sabbath, a passing religious Jew called out, ‘Scum!' Nisek turned to the man and fired back, ‘To insult your fellows is to insult God.'

By then I had become a part of his circle. We were a group of seven: six boys and a girl. A weaponless unit in the unarmed underground, we called ourselves the Flying Brigade and we dreamt of an uprising. We would meet every second week to discuss the political situation and the state of the war. Nisek, who carried on a perpetual love-affair with life, knew the atlas by heart and always had something positive and encouraging to say about the action on the various fronts. He would not be defeated by Rommel's successes in North Africa, and enthusiastically invoked the spirit of the great Russian commander Kutuzov.

Nine years after he had brought his ominous news to school, the Führer's thugs informed Nisek and his family that they had been selected for resettlement (at that time none of us knew the sinister meaning of that term). We all turned up to say goodbye, never doubting our dear friend's return. A few weeks later his coat came back — in its breast pocket a bullet-pierced,
blood-smirched memento: Nisek's old school certificate, neatly folded and full of promise.

 

 
My Uncle's Jacket