I Am Forbidden (12 page)

She searched her purse for coins. She looked right and left to make sure no one from her father’s world or from the seminary’s world was there to see her.

“You’re buying a Goyish paper?” Mila asked, alarmed.

Dragging her heavy suitcase, Mila marched toward the train pulling into the station. “I’m not sitting next to you if you’re going to read that,” Mila said when Atara caught up with her.

Atara dragged her suitcase down the narrow center aisle of the coach car, she thanked the man who helped her lift her suitcase onto the luggage rack, took a seat. Once more, she examined the photograph.

The Kasztner Train, Budapest, June 30, 1944
, the caption said.

She started to read. An agent of the Zionist Rescue Mission in Hungary, Rezsö Kasztner, had been accused of collaboration. A long trial in Israel surfaced conflicting accounts. Kasztner considered himself a hero for having the audacity to negotiate with Eichmann in Nazi-occupied Budapest and saving as many as he could, but the court concluded that Kasztner obtained safe passage for a few by agreeing to keep the rest from resisting deportation.

Witnesses who had lost their families in Auschwitz testified that Kasztner’s people circulated fake postcards from Kenyérmezö—the Hungarian breadbasket:
We are resettling. There is food, work
.… Those who heard about the cards
thought: Why flee and endanger anyone’s life? They boarded the cattle cars.

Others testified that Kasztner sent Halutzim, Zionist pioneers, to warn Hungarian communities, but the people would not listen. One woman recalled that in the town of Szatmár, the rabbi, Joel Teitelbaum, threatened to excommunicate the Zionist youth who tried to warn his congregation.

Atara paused. It felt odd to see the name of the Rebbe in a secular paper, a national daily. She stared again at the photograph and suddenly realized where she had seen the image before: in the countless tellings of Mila’s dream.

Open boxcars with Jews in them
.

Atara sprung up, eager to confirm Mila’s version of her mother’s death: There had been a train of open boxcars in Hungary, in the spring of ’44. She stopped—the caption under the photograph mentioned Budapest, but Mila’s parents were fleeing deportations from Kolozvár. And the Rebbe lived in Szatmár. She needed more information before she awakened Mila’s memories, she needed to be sure, she needed the train’s itinerary and the date it departed, she needed a list of passengers.…

In Dover, she caught headlines on a news cart:

She rushed down and bought two more papers. Once again, she saw mention of the Satmarer Rebbe. The
prominenten
, the
people Kasztner had saved, had not come forward to testify in his favor during the eighteen-month trial; they had not wanted to be identified as owing their lives to him.

The Rebbe of Satmar was on Kasztner’s train! Again, Atara wanted to run to Mila, but Mila would get angry if Atara suggested the Rebbe was linked to a Zionist venture. She needed more information. She read on.

The paper retold the judge’s verdict: Kasztner
sold his soul to the devil
when he sacrificed the mass of Hungarian Jews for a chosen few.

One editorial noted that Kasztner’s negotiations mirrored the stance of many Jewish leaders who agreed to the Nazi distinction between elite Jews and the masses—an agreement especially problematic in Hungary, where Jewish leaders knew where the cattle cars were headed; in April ’44, two escapees from Auschwitz, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, had informed Hungarian leaders, in detail, about the crematoria.

Atara stopped reading. Had the Rebbe of Szatmár been informed? Had he warned his community before fleeing? She scanned the tight print for
Joel Teitelbaum, Szatmár, Satmar, Satmarer Rebbe
.…

Kolozvár, Mila’s hometown.

If the Rebbe was part of the Kolozvár contingent, then Mila’s mother could have seen him.

Boarding the ferry to Calais, Atara spent her last coins on a magazine.

The Rebbe was on the contingent that left Kolozvár.

Atara rose. She wanted to apologize for doubting the story Mila had needed her so much to believe, about Mila’s mother running to the Rebbe.…

On a bench in the ferry’s passenger cabin, Mila was reading
Lives of Our Holy Rebbes
. She looked up when Atara called her name, and frowned when she saw the stack of newspapers in Atara’s hands. Just then, the loudspeaker sputtered that passengers should gather their belongings and prepare for customs. Out the large cabin windows, Atara saw the deckhands
already mooring the ferry to the dock. She would have to wait until they had gone through customs before speaking to Mila.

Holding their stateless papers instead of passports, the girls walked up to the customs officer. Atara’s heart fluttered as it had at previous border crossings, but other thoughts distracted her, thoughts of how much it would mean to Mila, that the circumstances of a special train, the circumstances of her mother’s death, could be validated. She also thought of how this new information might affect her relationship with Mila. Perhaps, once Mila learned that the Rebbe owed his life to a Zionist venture, to the very Zionist who negotiated with Eichmann, Mila might understand some of Atara’s doubts, might begin to question the Rebbe’s infallibility.

On the journey from Calais to Paris, in the intimacy of a compartment they had to themselves, Atara sat next to Mila and took her hand. She showed Mila the photograph of the open boxcars. She apologized for not believing Mila’s version of her mother’s death.

Mila stared at the photograph.

“It was a special train,” Atara explained, “that’s why the doors were open. It was a train of
prominenten
and the Rebbe was on it and the first contingent left from Kolozvár—”

“Kolozvár?” Mila’s voice trembled when she uttered the name of her hometown. “But the Rebbe lived in Szatmár, not Kolozvár.”

Atara told Mila what she had read about the Rebbe’s escape: the Rebbe had fled Szatmár in secret, in the middle of the night, but was caught before reaching Romania and was
placed in the Kolozvár ghetto, where he heard of the Zionist train for
prominenten
.

“The Rebbe would never deal with a Zionist,” Mila said flatly. “And the Rebbe was deported.”

“He was
not
deported.”

“To Bergen-Belsen.”

“Have you heard of regular Jewish deportees traveling from Bergen-Belsen to Switzerland
during
the war? The Rebbe spent five months in Bergen-Belsen because Kasztner’s negotiations were complicated, but all the people on Kasztner’s train were
Exchange Jews
. It meant that they had enough food. They didn’t work. Families weren’t separated. Even newborn babies survived, and old people, too. The Rebbe was not deported.”

“To Bergen-Belsen …” Mila said barely audibly. Then: “And this special train stopped where my parents were hiding?”

“I don’t know why it stopped but it’s as you always said: You saw the Rebbe.”

“What if I didn’t? What if I thought I recognized him but it wasn’t him?”

“Your mother saw him. You said she yelled ‘Rebbe!’ when she ran out.”

Mila sank under the weight of the tragedy returning to her. Her eyes closed. As if articulating an unspeakable doubt, she whispered, “But if the Rebbe could stop the train in front of our hiding place, why couldn’t he save us?”

Atara did not have the heart to tell Mila that when the Rebbe boarded Kasztner’s train, he had already decided
to leave her family behind. “You said the other trains, too, slowed around the bend. It wasn’t the Rebbe who stopped the train.”

“But when my mother ran out, was she trying to save him or was she hoping he would save us?”

“She must have hoped—your parents must have known about the Kasztner train, everyone in the ghetto knew, everyone tried—” Atara stopped. She feared that if Mila learned from her the specifics of the Rebbe’s escape, then Mila might dismiss the information as more of Atara’s questioning. She thought she must create a direct encounter between Mila and this new information. She held back the facts and feelings rushing through her, and rolled them all into one bold request: “Mila, there are maps, train schedules. There are witness accounts. We can find out every detail about Kasztner’s train and about the Rebbe’s escape. We can find out the exact date the train left Kolozvár and map its itinerary, we can find out what the people on Kasztner’s train knew about where the rest of the community was going. Mila, will you come with me to the library? ”

“The
library
?”

“To find out what happened, what happened in
your
life.”

Mila was silent, but she did not refuse.

The night of their arrival in Paris, the idea that they might go together to the library hovered between the girls. Atara, emboldened, took out the transistor radio she kept hidden on the armoire’s top shelf, a tiny radio she had traded
with a former classmate during her last year at the lycée. Ears glued to the crackling speaker, hair interwoven on the same pillow, the girls listened for news of Kasztner and the Kasztner affair. Kasztner’s condition had worsened. The girls thought of the dying man. Had a Jew really collaborated with Nazis? Had the Rebbe boarded a special train negotiated by a Zionist? To the girls, the two questions seemed equally inconceivable.

They did not turn off the radio after the news. French songs followed one after the other and soon the girls floated on rhythms where non-Jew and Jew throbbed to the same longings, boy and girl walking hand in hand and never letting go.…

The next day, when they woke, Atara reminded Mila of the research they needed to do. Mila nodded solemnly. In the morning the two girls cleaned the apartment. After lunch, Hannah encouraged them to go to the Luxembourg Gardens for a last carefree walk before the children—who had been distributed among orthodox families when Hannah was assigned to bed rest—came home.

Atara mentioned the library as soon as the two girls were outside. Again, Mila nodded, but when they reached the rue Soufflot that led to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Mila threaded her arm in Atara’s elbow and steered her toward the Luxembourg.

For the first time in years, the girls entered the gardens without pram or tow of siblings. They felt giddy, and slightly guilty, strolling down the chestnut-lined alley, just the two of
them. The end of winter was in the air. They leaned against the balustrade overlooking the pond. Pigeons basked in the warmer rays, feathers puffed around their tiny heads. The Sénat clock struck the hour and the girls wished that it would always be so, the two of them, together, watching the seasons change.

After the last chime had faded, Atara said, “There’s no one in Paris, no one in all of France whose pedigree is good enough for Zalman Stern. We’ll be married far from Paris—”

“No one will marry us off without our consent.”

“But our
only
choice is to consent. Mila … if I were courageous enough … if I prepared the baccalauréat and went to college, would you—”

“Courageous to go to college? What’s courageous is to remain a Jew.”

“But if I did go to college and my father disowned me, would I lose you, too?”

Mila stepped toward the large planters that gardeners in blue shifts were wheeling out of the orangerie. She read out the labels:
“Palmier-dattier, Laurier-rose, Grenadier
—
”
She turned to Atara. “When my parents live again, I want them to recognize me as a Jew. I want them to recognize my children. I want them to recognize
your
children.”

“And if your parents don’t—if the messiah doesn’t come in your lifetime?”

“Aneini!
Answer me!
” Mila called to the sky and her arms flew up as she spun on her tiptoes in front of a parterre of tulips; blue, white, red tulips, the colors of France casting
long shadows on the freshly seeded lawn. “The messiah will come and we’ll fly to Jerusalem …”

Nurserymen pushing wheelbarrows of potted plants turned their heads and whistled. Mila’s hem covered her knees, her long-sleeved blouse was buttoned to the neck, but she looked graceful spinning with her narrow waist and her tall updo. Mila and Atara hooked elbows. They skipped under the chestnut trees, out of the Luxembourg; they skipped above the paving seams of the rue Servandoni, across the boulevard Saint-Germain, along the rue de Seine. On the crest of the Pont des Arts, they leaned over the bridge’s railing and turned up their palms for the first drops of rain. The sky unleashed itself and they whirled as they had as children, arms stretched wide as their tongues searched their lips for the taste of clouds. Streetlamps were twinkling stars.… Atara flew above river and roofs, above all the boundaries the world drew around her. Mila whirled faster still, until she let herself drop to the ground, too dizzy to answer Atara’s calls. When Mila’s eyes opened, they were filled, not with Atara’s inebriation but with apology—for surviving, for being alive. Atara combed her fingers through Mila’s disheveled hair, combed them toward what she hoped might still be the direction of an escape.

On the quai de la Mégisserie, shop owners carried twittering birdcages indoors; roller shutters rattled shut. It was late. They would go to the library tomorrow. The girls started to run.