East of Time (38 page)

It is early April 1944. The winter is almost gone but, here and there, clusters of snow are still rusting away what remains of their white lives. The forenoons are still freezing, and up above, on the unblemished blue expanse, the sun like a golden iceberg is eyeing the discontented day tottering on the crossroads of the seasons.

It's Sunday morning. My father in his sheepskin coat gazes into the stove, where our last picture-frame is fighting the flames for its wooden life. He looks resigned, he is not well, plagued by a severe inflammation of his joints, and the only remedy is fatty food and Vigantol, both of them available only to those who are part of, or connected to, the higher levels of the ghetto pyramid.

He beckons me over and, without preliminaries, begins. ‘My existence has become a bitter drink,' he says, ‘yet I must swallow it day by day, drop by drop, until there is no more liquid in the flask.' Thus speaks my father, the eternal doubter, at this moment uncharacteristically firm. ‘We know there are strong rumours,' he goes on, ‘of a final ghetto liquidation, and as your mother once said, if any of us will make it, it must be you, the strongest and the youngest in the family.'

‘No, dad!'

‘Please, son, don't interrupt. Perhaps I'm telling you this because I have a need to talk, to talk at a time when our lives hang between a yes and a no. My father — your grandfather Yeruchim — was a melamed, a teacher, a fanatically religious man. My mother, Perl Gittel, was a housewife, and I a yeshiva student. We were very poor people, but my father believed that it was God's will. I rebelled against such a God, I refused to serve a cruel God, and joined the revolutionary Bund. In 1907 I was arrested. My mother came to visit me and, seeing
her son behind bars, suffered a heart attack and died. I have never forgiven myself. After I was freed I went to see my father but he wouldn't look at me.'

He stopped, as if to gasp for a breath of air before continuing.

‘I threw myself into socialist activities, into party life, hoping to build a just world without poverty, but my mother's image never left me, never, never. Now, thinking back, I'm sure I was exactly like my father, a zealot, only on a different landscape. Bundist theory became my Torah, the red flag my prayershawl. Now, all this has lost its meaning. This war, like the previous one, has miserably betrayed socialism, and this ghetto has transformed our once glorious party brotherhood into a soup-kitchen idealism. I am not blaming anyone. Humanity and decency are the first victims of hunger. When the ghetto was set up, a group of my comrades formed themselves into a self-appointed council; it was the only way we could reorganize the party and mobilize the membership. They approached me to head a delegation of textile workers (I had been one of their leaders, and for twenty years their elected judge), a delegation to Chaim Rumkowski, who had just been appointed by the Germans as Eldest of the Jews. The Germans knew precisely whom to choose when they usurped our town. I told my colleagues that to negotiate with this character was to succumb to his demands or bribes, so they picked somebody else. What happened I don't know, because their dealings took place behind closed doors.'

Here father paused again. I had the impression that he was chewing over what he had just told me — perhaps he had said too much. This man, who had seen in the Bund the ideal latter-day expression of the prophets, this God-intoxicated agnostic, had always been cautious with words. He was not one to needlessly condemn or praise: nothing gets better for
being condemned, he would say, nothing gets better for being praised.

‘Son, all this reminds me of a passage I once read in Søren Kierkegaard's book,
Either/Or
. A fire broke out backstage in a theatre, and the clown came out to inform the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated his warning, but they cheered even more loudly. Kierkegaard supposed that this was how the world would be destroyed — amid general applause from all the wits who believed it was a joke...'

Father fell silent and I knew he was already somewhere else. He was a master at being absent when the need came upon him. Turning his face away without another word, he fixed his stoical gaze on the embers dying in the stove.

 

 
The Logic of Water
 

Sickly sixty-year-old Szymon Brener, known in our little world for his intrusiveness and his crude loquacity — who, thanks to his son's diligence in the ghetto police, had evaded, along with his wife, many roundups and resettlements — invited himself into our apartment a week before the rumours of the total liquidation of our ghetto became a reality.

When Szymon opened our door, father was making some notes on a few pieces of paper. ‘Panie Gershon,' he shouted excitedly, ‘have you been keeping a diary?'

‘Sort of,' father replied.

‘Can I have a peep?'

‘No, Szymon, you can't.'

‘Why not?'

‘It's private.'

‘So at least tell me what you're writing about.'

Father maintained his customary calm. ‘It's about memory,' he said.

‘Memory?'

‘Yes — the liar's greatest enemy.'

Not knowing quite how to take this little conundrum, our visitor smiled foolishly and plunged ahead regardless.

‘Panie Gershon, they're talking about a complete liquidation of our ghetto, but don't believe them. You know, Panie Gershon,' and his voice assumed an authoritative tone, ‘my son has first-hand information. Sure, some of us will have to go — maybe fifteen thousand, thirty thousand, perhaps even fifty thousand, who knows? But just like on the previous occasions, our Rumkowski will outsmart the Germans, and at the end of the war he'll march victorious out of the ghetto, ahead of all the people he saved. You know, Panie Gershon, there's a chapter in the Talmud which actually legitimizes our Eldest's strategy.' And without stopping, Szymon launched into his Talmudic commentary.

‘Two men are travelling in the desert. One of them has a flask of water. If they both drink from the flask, neither will survive the journey, as there isn't enough water to sustain them both before they reach the next settlement. However, if only one of them drinks, he will be able to reach the settlement. Concerning this problem, Ben Petura held that it is better that both should drink and die, than that one of them should see the death of his fellow traveller. This teaching was accepted until Rabbi Akiva came along and invoked the Torah, where it is written that “your brother may live with you” — implying, he argued, that your own life took precedence and there was no obligation for a person to save another's life at the expense of his own. Thus the owner of the flask should use all the water to ensure his own survival...'

I looked at father and knew that he was about to explode. Yet somehow he harnessed his rage. ‘Do you know, Szymon, what you've just said?' His voice was slow and controlled. ‘Do you know?' he repeated, the anger beginning to show. ‘To equate
Rabbi Akiva's sense of justice and respect for life with Rumkowski's logic is, in my opinion, an unforgivable obscenity.'

‘But why, why?' cried the other, taken aback.

‘First of all,' said father, regaining his composure, ‘the Talmud talks of
two
people, and only one of them has a flask of water, and it's his right to decide to drink and live. But here, there was once a community of a hundred and seventy thousand souls, and from the very inception of our confinement — of our desert journey, if you like — not I and not you, but only this so-called Eldest has held in his hands the flask of water, and he, this miserable clown, has adjudicated — in the interests of our enemy — who is to drink and who is not. And let me reiterate, Szymon: only a fool could employ the Talmud to justify Rumkowski's madness.'

At this point mother gave her husband a stern look, as if to say ‘Be careful'. But my worn-out dad, who I think had already made peace with eternity, took no notice. Perhaps his intuition told him it would make no difference. So he persisted.

‘Look here, Szymon, I cannot tell you how I would feel in such a dilemma. But I can assure you that all those Jews who have a God in their soul and eventually march out of this ghetto alive, knowing that someone else died in their place, will walk the earth for the rest of their days with a heavy heart.'

 

 
Dream
 

I arrived in spring and stood at a crossroads near the ghetto.

The countryside was already in bloom; the grass was a lush young green, sprinkled with brilliant yellow wildflowers. From nearby I could hear the silvery tinkle of my homely little rivulet, and the friendly greetings of birches, as I emerged from the
Yiddish-speaking forest and set off along the Black Road that led to the village. I stopped for a moment beneath a royal oak, from which was suspended a huge crucifix bearing a shadowy figure. Before I could look more closely, I noticed in the distance my old friend Ja
ś
. ‘Hey Ja
ś
,' I cried, ‘it's me! Remember how we used to roast potatoes at sunset in the open field?' But Ja
ś
wouldn't answer, and when I tried to take a step in his direction the road between us expanded, expanded, as if by magic, and kept expanding until Ja
ś
vanished. So I started to walk towards the place where I had once spent my summer holidays, and on the way I passed by the old redbrick villa I remembered. On its veranda, just like years ago, two young girls in white dresses, holding each other around the waist, danced relentlessly to a tango coming from their tarnished gramophone.

Finally I came to the farmhouse where we used to rent a room during our vacations. The war had changed nothing here. Across from the humble farmer's cottage, its windows adorned with gaily-coloured flowerpots, a herd of black-and-white cows grazed peacefully. Rex, who had known me well, was lazing in front of his kennel, with flies buzzing about his eyes, and in the endless blue sky a white stork was searching for its nest, blown away by the autumn wind.

Quite unexpectedly, Kazia appeared. It was five years since we had made love here; she had been fifteen then, but it was a young woman who now walked towards me with open outstretched arms, her head adorned with a wreath of cornflowers which matched her deep-set blue eyes and her golden hair lifting in the breeze. ‘What are you doing here?' I asked.