Jewels and Ashes (16 page)

It is then that I realise confrontation cannot be avoided. He must be faced directly; and when I do, I am drawn into an ocean of confusion. There are wild waves of anger, dull blotches of hopelessness, a glint of obsession. Yet there are also specks of light sparkling with the last promise of love, the barest sign that Marek can still be reached. To look away now would mean defeat, but to continue to look much longer would overwhelm me.

Suddenly Marek awakens from his trance. He changes direction abruptly, with a look of contempt, and skids towards Bialowieza forest. The game is up; the brotherhood dissolving. Two men lie sprawled across the back seat. Marek seems broken. ‘It could have been such a great night', he stutters, as we pull up by the Bialowieza Inn.

Now I understand that there have been many such nights: some led by well-organised brotherhoods who have calculated their assaults before priming themselves with spirits to spur on their rage; and others, which have begun as ours today, with a show of love, an intent to create intimate bonds, and yet they too have ended with a blind charge towards darkness. And as a result the earth is soaked with blood.

Bialowieza forest straddles the border between Poland and the Soviet Union. It comprises 58 000 hectares on the Polish side alone, within which are bison, elk, wolves, foxes, beaver, lynxes, and many species of birds and beasts on the verge of extinction. Late afternoon, and there emerges from the forest an isolated bird call, an insect's soft shriek, a rustle and flash of reptile scurrying by, petrified at the intruder. Fungus, moss, lichens, and wild herbs cling to each other; vines, foliage, and a dense undergrowth of living and dead matter give way to meadows of wild flowers illuminated by the last light. Paths thread through groves of spruce, lindens, and maples, deep into the forest; and even here, in the remotest recesses, I come across a primitive crucifix made of oak. Beneath it is a stone and, upon the stone, figures indicating how many were executed here, in the cold shade, beneath the forest canopy.

The country is littered with reminders: stones, plaques, monuments; in forest clearings, within open fields, on busy city streets, in village squares, by roadside shrines, and in provincial museums. In all seasons, on anniversaries that crowd the calendar from one year's end to the other, there are candles to be lit, silent vigils to be held, and pilgrimages from abroad to be undertaken in a land stalked by smouldering sorrows. And beyond the physical borders, the echoes of what happened just one generation ago, on this soil, reverberate in the dreams of survivors scattered throughout the world; and the children of the survivors, they also have been drawn into this landscape of darkness with its aborted stories and its collective memory of suffering.

There must be a way beyond this grim inheritance. It is as if, having come this far, I have no choice but to continue the journey, completing tales half told and half imagined, as I follow my forebears on their final trek, wherever it may have taken them, and beyond, far beyond, so that I will never have to return.

Part Two

CHAPTER TEN

I MAKE MY WAY at dawn to the Palatz station, so called because here once stood the summer palace of Count Branitski. It overlooked the Bialowieza settlement, and became a hunting retreat for a succession of kings and czars. They would ride into the forest on horseback, accompanied by large retinues of cavalry and soldiers, with hunting dogs scurrying about their feet. Palaces loomed large in the Yiddish novels I consumed as a child. They would be situated on hills overlooking a shtetl in which life revolved around a synagogue, a marketplace, and a ritual bath-house. At least, this is how father describes it. ‘Take these three ingredients', he tells me, ‘and you have a shtetl: a place to pray, a place to trade, and a place to bathe; while above, stood the world of Polish and Russian aristocracy — remote and inaccessible.'

It was a fragile romance, my dream of the shtetl. And it was vague. I skimmed the many books father had brought with him from Poland. They exuded a scent of decay and a comforting feeling of warmth and solidity. Occasionally I came across flowers my father had pressed between pages. The Yiddish texts, in Hebraic script, revealed their meaning only in fleeting glimpses. I did not have mastery over the language. English had submerged the mother tongue; and as a child I was not seeking detail. I was content with the skimming, as a skier is more than content with a landscape that whirls past in a brilliant flash of colour.

The romance can be felt on this cool dawn as I wait for a train back to Bialystok. On the station roof two herons perch in a nest, outlined against a pale blue sky. The moon is still visible, descending towards the upper reaches of the forest. Throughout the Bialystoku region, mists are rising and, in provincial stations, groups of peasants sit upon their luggage as sleepy station-masters signal the arrival of the first train.

When Dorota received a blue dress on her fourth birthday, she recalled the blue hat she had recently noticed in a shop window. She crept into her mother's bedroom, removed some money from a handbag, and ran back to the shop to purchase the blue hat. Her mother's anger was softened by pride in Dorota's sense of good taste. She chided her about the stolen money, but was more than pleased to allow her to keep the hat.

Several days later, Dorota wore the blue dress for the first time. Her mother pinned a pink flower to the hat. They walked together: mother, father, two sisters, under a clear blue sky; blue upon blue with shades of pink on an autumnal landscape in a town somewhere in the vicinity of Bialystok.

Dorota tells me the story forty-seven years later in a chance encounter, on a train travelling between Palatz station and Bialystok. There are countless such stories lying dormant in remote Polish towns and hamlets, always about to be told yet again, variations on a common theme, memories which refuse to fade.

They were on the way to church. She was overjoyed with the new dress, the hat, the presence of her parents and sister. Life was an infinity of blue in which there hovered a ball of gold; and as Dorota gazed up at this expanse she noticed that, from the halo surrounding the golden ball, a silver streak had materialised and was diving towards her. The first bomb was falling; the girl was being pushed by her parents, screaming frantic instructions: ‘Run! Jump! Stay down!' The infinity of blue was now blotted by a swarm of machines spitting fire, and Dorota's blue dress was stained by mud as she lay on the ground in a town consumed by flames: September 1, 1939. Another war had begun. Never again would the family be together.

Father isn't sure when he received his last letter from Bialystok. Despite the many hours he has spent sorting out journals and letters from a past life, there never seems to be an end to it. ‘At first I lose a valued document', he explains. ‘Then I find it again, unexpectedly, when looking for something else. So 1 put it in a new place, which I am sure I can easily locate. But then I forget where it is and I have to start searching again.' It is as if the past refuses to allow itself to be put in order, and is always intruding into the present with disturbing hints of a world of irredeemable chaos, forever spinning out of control.

Yet, as usual, when I press him hard enough, something seems to turn up, and father finds a letter from his brother, Isaac, dated August 1938. ‘Isaac was down to earth', says father, ‘family oriented, ready to lend a helping hand in the toughest of times.' He had joined Bishke as a partner in the family business, making deliveries to local subscribers. Eventually he branched out on his own, to work as an administrator in the offices of Yiddish newspapers.

Isaac writes of family matters and confesses to having become a simple ‘Yidl', preoccupied with his son's teething problems and bowel movements, immersed in ‘my little corner of existence where all yesterdays are the same as tomorrows'. His infant son is a rascal, a cheeky boy who leaves behind him a train of torn and broken objects. ‘But when he gazes at you with his wide-open eyes it is impossible to get angry, no matter how much damage he has caused.'

Father's eyes light up as he reads me Isaac's letter, and is reminded of friends he has not seen for over fifty years. Each one referred to by Isaac he expands upon, with eccentric accounts of their various deeds as young men about town.

‘Ran into Godel Perelstein the other day', writes Isaac. ‘He carries your last letter around with him as if it were a precious treasure and apologises for not having replied. He claims he can only compose letters when he is in an appropriate mood.'

‘Godel was a great reciter of Yiddish poetry', father adds. ‘He would perform in front of packed audiences in the Palace theatre, declaiming the works of my favourite writers.'

‘Moishe Poznanski sends his regards', reports Isaac ‘He was a handsome man', says father. ‘A leather-worker by trade. For many years we dreamed of setting up our own business with the name “Everlasting Shoes”. When at last we managed to scrape together the money, the business lasted for about a month before our creditors realised how hopeless we were and dismantled our fantasies.'

As for Zundel Mandelbroit, father needs little prompting. He was his best friend. ‘We used to go out into the fields on summer nights and camp under the stars. We wanted to penetrate the mysteries of the night. But if even a few mosquitoes attacked, we quickly forgot our resolve, broke off our philosophising, and ran back home.'

And as he reminisces father recalls that, yes, there had been another letter after Isaac's, written by Zundel, sometime towards the end of 1939. It had disappeared. ‘Perhaps it is lying somewhere around the house', father speculates. ‘But what he wrote I can never forget. “Help us get out”, he had pleaded. “We need visas, permits, a means of escape. The ground is beginning to burn beneath our feet! Help us get out!”‘

He moves fast. Time is slipping through his clutches. Yet he holds on. He often breaks into a run, a little trot, as he careers around the house. He paints the peeling kitchen walls in pinks and blues, bright colours. But only in patches. Father is far too impatient to remain still for long. His spritely body scampers up and down ladders.

‘You're a growing boy', I tell him when he reaches the top rung.

Never at a loss for words, he replies: ‘Yes, growing down into the ground, towards the everlasting, a meal for the worms.'

He trips through the ninth decade of his life, a joke here, a comment there, forever rushing, as if pursued by ghosts that have never quite caught up with him. And I begin to suspect that, for him also, the ground is burning beneath his feet, and has been for many years. As for mother, she has become increasingly withdrawn, her arms folded hard against her chest, her glance directed elsewhere, far removed. She sits still, resigned, hunched within herself, allowing the ghostly dance of memory to have its way.

Chaimke, Uncle Joshua Probutski's first child, seems to have been everyone's favourite. When he was a baby the six Probutski sisters would argue over who would have him sleeping next to them. He was the first of their nephews, their first opportunity for mothering.

Mother last saw Chaimke in December 1932, on the day she left Bialystok to join her sister Feigl in Melbourne. A third sister, Chaie, left soon after for Argentina where she was reunited with her husband. Liebe, Sheindl, and Tzivie remained in Bialystok, and Chaimke continued to enjoy the devoted attention of just three aunts.

In contrast to father, mother spends little time sorting out old documents. Instead she has selected the few she seems to regard as essentials, and assembled them in one compact bundle held together by a rubber band. Included are several photos taken in happier prewar New Zealand days; letters she had received from her three sons during their various journeys abroad; and a postcard I had sent from Milan after attending a concert in the renowned La Scala opera house. Of all the cards I have written over the years, this is the one she has retained — touched, it appears, by my references to her as a singer.

The postcard lies wedged between a number of letters, extracted from the many sent by her husband between 1932 and 1936, during their three-and-a-half years of enforced separation. As a child I had often come across the letters, tied neatly together, in a dining room cupboard which I would explore when mother and father were both out at work. Father scolded me for tampering with such important documents; but he had allowed us, the three brothers, to remove stamps from the envelopes. They became the pride of our collection. Not one of our friends had seen such ancient Polish stamps, and they were worth a fortune in exchanges.

The few letters that mother has retained appear to have been chosen with some deliberation. Within one of them, among father's usual ten pages or more of Bialystok gossip and poetic declarations of love, he had included a note written by Chaimke. It is short and to the point:

My dear Aunty Hoddes,

I am going up to fifth grade. At the moment we are on holidays. We've already had two months and only two weeks remain. Now I'll tell you how I spend my day. I wash myself, eat and pray. Then I go out into the street. Now I want to tell you that I'm collecting stamps. You always send me a yellow and a green one. Send me other colours also. I'm ending my letter. I give my regards to everyone. Goodnight. I am going to sleep.

Sometime towards mid 1939, mother received a letter from Bialystok written by her sister Sheindl. ‘Is it possible to obtain visas for our parents?', she had asked. ‘Or for a brother? A sister? And if not, at least for Chaimke? Forgive us for asking, but things are looking bleak.'

Whenever mother talks about Chaimke, as she often has over the years, she lapses into a voice tinged with weariness and regret. She had tried to obtain a visa for him. She had hounded immigration officials in Wellington, knocked on doors, pleaded on Chaimke's behalf, turned this way and that — all to no avail. Doors to the New World were not easily prised open. Mother had to make do with sending money; and she was never to find out whether the family received it or not.