The Story of a Life (7 page)

My mother was murdered at the beginning of the war. I didn’t see her die, but I did hear her one and only scream. Her death is deep inside me, but more a part of me than her death is her reappearance after it. Any time I’m happy or sad I see her face. She’s either leaning on the windowsill or standing at the doorway of our house, as if she’s about to come toward me. Now I am thirty years older than she was when she died. Time hasn’t added years to her. She’s always young and fresh.

The fear that I’d lose the stream was unfounded. I followed it for its entire length, and fortunately it continued right up to the edge of the forest. This was a brook like those I remembered from vacations with my parents, shaded by willow branches and flowing very slowly. Every few hours I’d kneel down and drink from its water. I hadn’t learned to pray, but this kneeling brought vividly to mind the peasants who worked the fields and who would drop to their knees, silently crossing themselves.

In a forest no one dies of hunger. Here was a thicket of blueberries, and alongside the trunk of a tree, a strawberry patch. I even found a pear tree. If not for the cold at night, I would have slept more. At that time, I still didn’t have a clear notion of death. I’d already seen many dead people in the ghetto and in the camp, and I knew that a dead person doesn’t get back up on his feet and is eventually put in a pit. Yet I still didn’t grasp death as an end. I continued to expect my parents to come and collect me. This expectation, this tense waiting, stayed with me throughout the war, and it would return to overcome me whenever despair sunk its talons into me.

How many days was I in the forest? Perhaps till it started to rain. Living among the trees, I began to get colder as the days passed. There was no place to hide, and the wetness penetrated my flimsy clothes. Fortunately, I had been wearing little laced boots that my mother had bought me some days before the German invasion, but they had also begun to take on water and become heavy. So I had no choice but to try to find refuge in one of the peasant homes that were scattered over the ridge of the hill next to the forest. As it turned out, they were a considerable distance away. After a long walk, I stood before a hut whose roof was covered with a thick layer of straw. When I drew near the gate, some dogs sprang at me, and I only just managed to run away from them.

On rainy days, peasants don’t leave their huts. I stood in the rain, and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I fell into one of the muddy ditches and disappeared. The thought that I might never see my parents again made my knees buckle, and I fell down upon them.

As despair gripped my body, I saw a low house on a neighboring hillside, and I immediately noticed that there were no dogs around it. I knocked on the door and waited in great fear. After a few moments, the door opened and a young woman stood in the doorway.

“What do you want, child?”

“I want to work,” I said.

She looked me up and down.

“Come in.”

She looked like a peasant woman, yet somehow different. She was wearing a green blouse with shell buttons. I spoke Ukrainian, which was the mother tongue of our maid, Victoria. I had loved her and her language. It didn’t surprise me that this woman reminded me of Victoria, even though there was no physical resemblance between them.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Instinct whispered to me not to reveal the truth, so I told her that I had been born in a place called Lutshintz, that my parents had been killed in an air raid, and that since then I had been wandering around. She stared at me, and for a moment it seemed as though she was about to grab my coat and slap my face. I was surprised that she didn’t.

“You’re not a thief?” she asked, with a penetrating look.

“No,” I said.

And so I came to stay with her. I did not know who she was or what my work would be. It was raining heavily, and I was just happy to be surrounded by walls, near a hearth that radiated warmth. The windows were small and were covered with bright peasant drapes. On the walls were many pictures cut out of magazines.

By the following day, I had already swept the house, washed the dishes, and peeled potatoes and beets. From then on, I would rise early and work till late at night.

Once a week I’d go to the village store to buy sugar, salt, sausage, and vodka for her. The walk from the hut to the store took an hour and a half. The path was green and filled with tall trees, and cattle grazed there.

Only two years before, I had had parents. Now my existence was no more than what I saw before me. Sometimes I managed to steal some moments for myself, and I would go and sit on the bank of a brook. From there my previous life seemed so far away, it was as if it had never been. Only at night, in my sleep, would I be next to my mother and father, in the yard or on the street. Awakening in the morning was a blow, like a slap in the face.

The woman was called Maria, and she wasn’t married. Almost every night a different man would come into the hut, and they would shut themselves away together behind a curtain. At first they would talk and drink vodka, and afterward
there’d be loud laughter and, in the end, silence. This sequence would repeat itself night after night. “Don’t be frightened,” I would say to myself, and yet I was. Along with the fear, sometimes there was a strange pleasure.

The night did not always end quietly. Occasionally an argument broke out. Maria didn’t mince her words; when she did not like something or thought that someone might be cheating her, she shouted in an awful, blood-curdling voice that could make the walls of the hut shudder. And if this wasn’t enough, she might also throw a plate, a shoe, or any other object that she could lay her hands on. But there were also nights that ended quietly, in kisses. The man would declare his love and promise to bring many presents, and Maria, for her part, laughed and teased.

Maria’s hut was one long room that was curtained off at one end. I would sit on the huge stove and eavesdrop. Sometimes I could not restrain myself and would peek through the cracks of the planks above the stove. I would usually be too frightened to see anything, but once I glimpsed Maria and she was completely naked. A warm pleasure washed over me.

Sometimes she would tell me to go outside and pick wildflowers. After picking them, I would fill jugs with water and thrust the stalks into them. Once, during a moment of fury, she grabbed one of the jugs and threw it right at the head of the tall peasant who was growling at her from deep in his throat, like a bear.

Maria knew no fear. When something did not please her, or when a man did not behave properly, she would hurl a stream of curses at him. If the man failed to apologize, or if the apology seemed inadequate, she would fling some object at him or throw him out of the hut. “You witch!” I heard a man shout at her on more than one occasion.

She had three wooden tubs in her hut. In the smallest
she washed her feet: in the medium one she would wash her body after a client had left; and the third one, the largest, was the bathtub where she would pamper herself. She would soak herself in it for hours on end, singing, chattering away, reminiscing, or even confessing. More than once I observed her lounging in the large tub, submerged in the water, a long, lazy creature that even the large tub could not contain.

Suddenly it was winter, and the men no longer came as before. Maria would sit by the table shuffling cards. Playing with them amused her. Sometimes she would burst out laughing, but at other times her face would suddenly darken and she would let out a shriek. Once, during one of her black moments, when the sandwich that I’d served her was not to her liking, she grabbed me and shouted, “You wretch, I’ll kill you!”

But she wasn’t always angry. Her moods could change like the skies. As soon as the clouds lifted from her face, she would be full of joy. More than once, she picked me up in her arms. She was not particularly large, but she was extremely strong. With just her shoulder, she could shove the cow in the barn. Most of the time she was engrossed in herself and did not talk to me. It seemed to me then that she was dreaming of someplace else.

During one of the long winter nights, she told me that she had family in the distant city of Kishinev, and that one day she planned to travel there to visit them. I wanted to ask her when, but I didn’t. I had already learned that it was best not to ask. Questions made her angry, and I’d already been given slaps for my questions. I tried to make myself scarce and to ask as little as possible.

In the winter she slept late or lounged in bed. I would serve her a mug of coffee and a slab of bread spread with butter, and she would eat it propped up against the pillows. She
seemed younger. She sang a lot, cut out flowers from paper, baked a cake, or sat by the mirror for hours, combing her hair.

“And did you have brothers and sisters?” she asked, to my surprise.

“No.”

“Better that way. I have two sisters, but I’m not close to them. They’re married, and they have grown children. Even my parents don’t love me,” she said, smiling to herself. But usually she paid no attention to me. Deep in her own thoughts, mumbling to herself, she dredged up the names of people and places and cursed. Her cursing was bitter and even more frightening than when she screamed and shouted.

By the time winter set in, my arms had grown stronger. Food was not plentiful, but at night I would climb down and steal a slice of sausage or a sliver of halvah, leftovers from the meals that Maria had prepared for her guests. Now I could easily draw the bucket up from the well and carry it straight back to the house. My former life seemed distant and blurred to me. Sometimes a word, a sentence, or a glimpse of memory from home would overcome me unexpectedly and stir me deeply.

During one of my shopping expeditions to the village, a Ukrainian child latched on to me, shouting “Jew-boy!”

I froze.

The fear that someone would identify me had loomed over me ever since I had left the camp, and with this child’s shout my fears were realized.

Instinct prompted me to react, and so I ran after the boy. Taken aback by my daring, he started to shout, “Help! Help!” and disappeared into one of the yards. I was satisfied with my reaction, but in my heart I took this as a warning: there must still be something, some trait, that was giving me away.

From then on, I took care to cover up any signs that might betray me. In the toolshed I found an old, worn-out vest, and I asked Maria for permission to wear it. I also found a pair of peasant shoes, which I bound with rope, as the peasants did. Strangely, the threadbare old clothes infused me with new strength.

Toward the end of the winter, I realized I had grown taller. It was a very small change, but I could feel it. The palms of my hands had become broader and harder. I became friendly with the cow, and I learned how to milk her. Even more important, I was no longer afraid of dogs. I adopted two puppies, and whenever I returned from the village they would come out to greet me with yelps of affection.

The puppies were my good friends. I occasionally spoke to them in my mother tongue and told them about my parents and my house. The words that came out of my mouth sounded so strange to me that I thought I must be lying to them. One night Maria surprised me with a question about my family’s origins. Without the slightest hesitation I answered, “Ukrainian. Son of Ukrainians,” and I was happy with the way the reply had come out of me. I went back to sleep, but not without registering a warning: What had made her ask?

I got used to this new life and could even say that I liked it. I loved the cow, the puppies, the bread that Maria baked in the oven, the yogurt in the clay bowl, and I even loved the hard household chores. One time Maria shut herself behind her curtain and cried and cried. I had no idea why, and I did not dare ask her. Her life, it appears, was entangled in the lives of many people. Sometimes she’d get scraps of greetings from her elderly parents and from her sisters. Even her ex-husband continued to bother her from a distance. She was persecuted perhaps even more than I was, but she didn’t give in. She fought her enemies with all her might. Most of all, she fought with herself and with the demons that surrounded her.
She would repeatedly claim that there were demons popping up everywhere, and you needed eyes on the back of your head to see them. To drown her troubles, Maria drank vodka incessantly. Men lusted after her flesh, and their bites on her neck and shoulders were visible to the eye. She would curse those who bit, calling them “swine,” but not without pride at having driven them crazy with lust.

The vodka, the men, and the ranting would tire her out, and then she would sleep in, sometimes till late in the afternoon. Sleep did her good. She would get out of bed light and youthful and would start to hum. I would serve her a mug of coffee, and she would call me her “foolish lambkin,” for my hair was curly then. Sometimes she would give my bottom an affectionate pinch. I loved her good moods, and I was afraid of her depressions. When she was happy, she would sing, dance, call out the name of Jesus, and say, “My beloved Saviour won’t ever betray me.”

Maria’s happy spells would fill the hut with a wonderful light, but her depressions were more powerful than her happiness. They were deep and lingering, and they could instantly darken the hut. In one of her black moods she shouted at me, “Bastard, son of bastards! Liar, son of liars! I’ll cut your throat with a kitchen knife!”

This threat, more than any other, bit into my soul. It was clear: she knew my secret, and when the time came, she would carry out her threat. Were it not for the snow, I would have run away, but even though it was not falling quite as heavily as it had been, it still fell day and night, and it darkened the days.

Eventually the snowfalls ceased and the rains began. My life emptied of all memory and became as smooth as the slopes of the pasture that surrounded me. Even in my dreams I no longer saw my parents. Sometimes it seemed to me that I had been born in this darkness, that what had existed before
had been just an illusion. Once I dreamed that I saw my mother, and it seemed as though she saw me but then turned her back on me. This hurt me so much that the next day I vented my anger on the poor beast in the cowshed.