War and Remembrance (138 page)

The quartet is already playing at the far end of the long low slope-roofed room, which was once usable for big gatherings, but is now filling up with bunks as more and more Jews sluice into the ghetto; far faster, as yet, than they are sluicing out “to the east.” The whole hope of the ghetto Jews is that the Americans and the Russians will smash Frost-Cuckoo Land in time to save those piling up in the Theresienstadt floodgate. The object of life meantime is to avoid being transported, and to make the days and nights bearable with culture.

Jesselson’s quartet makes excellent music: three gray-headed men and a very ugly middle-aged woman, playing on instruments smuggled into the ghetto, their shabbily dressed bodies swaying to the brilliant Haydn melodies, their faces intent and bright with inner light. The loft is packed. People hunch or lie on the bunks, squat on the floor, line the walls on their feet, beside the hundreds sitting jammed together on long wooden benches. Natalie
waits for the piece to end, so as not to cause a commotion, then pushes through the crush. People recognize her and make way.

The puppet stage stands ready behind the musicians’ chairs. She sits by Udam on the floor in front, and lets the balm of the music — Dvorak now — flow over her soul: the sweet violins and viola, the sobbing and thundering cello, weaving a pretty arabesque of folksong. After that the musicians play a late Beethoven quartet. The Theresienstadt programs are long, the audiences rapt and grateful, though here and there the sick or the elderly nod off.

Before the puppet show begins Udam sings a new Yiddish composition,
Mi Kumt
(“They’re Coming”). This is another of his ingenious double-meaning political numbers. A lonely old man is singing on his birthday that everybody has forgotten him, and he is sitting sadly alone in his room in Prague. Suddenly his relatives begin to arrive. He turns joyful in the refrain, capering about the stage and snapping his fingers:

Oy they’re coming, they’re coming after all!

Coming from the east, coming from the west,

English cousins, Russian cousins,

American cousins,

All kinds of cousins!

Coming in planes, coming in ships
—

Oy what joy, oy what a day,

Oy thank God, from the east, from the west,

Oy thank God, they’re coming!

Instant hit! In the encore, the audience takes up the refrain, clapping in rhythm:
Coming from the east, coming from the west!
On this high note the puppet show commences.

Before
The King of Frost-Cuckoo Land,
they do another favorite sketch. Punch is a ghetto official, in the mood to have sex with his wife. Judy puts him off. There is no privacy, she’s hungry, he hasn’t bathed, the bunk is too narrow, and so forth, familiar ghetto excuses which bring roars of laughter. He takes her to his office. Here they are alone; she coyly submits, but as their lovemaking commences, his underlings keep interrupting with ghetto problems. Udam’s amorous coos and grunts of man and wife, alternated with Punch’s irascible official tones and Judy’s frustrated squawking, with some ribald lines and action, add up to a very funny business. Even Natalie, crouched beside Udam manipulating the dolls, keeps bursting into giggles.

The revised
Frost-Cuckoo Land
draws great laughter, too; and Udam and Natalie emerge flushed from behind the curtains to take bow after bow.

Calls arise here and there in the loft: “Udam!”

He shakes his head and waves protesting hands.

More calls: “Udam, Udam, Udam!”

Gesturing for quiet, he asks to be excused, he is tired, he is not in the mood, he has a cold; another time.

“No, no. Now!
Udam! Udam!”

This happens at every puppet performance. Sometimes the audience prevails, sometimes Udam does beg off. Natalie sits. He strikes a somber singer’s attitude, hands clasped before him, and in a deep cantorial baritone begins a mournful chant.

Udam
…
udam
…
udam
…

Chills creep along Natalie’s spine each time he starts it. This is a passage of the Yom Kippur liturgy.
“Udam yesoidoi may-ufar vay soifoi lay-ufar
…”

Man is created of the dust, and his end is in the dust. He is like a broken potsherd, a fading flower, like a floating mote, a passing shadow, and like a dream that flies away.

After every pair of images comes the refrain of the opening melody, which the audience softly chants:

Udam
…
udam
…
udam.

It means

Man… man
…
man.
The word in Hebrew for
man
is
adam. Udam
is a Polish-Yiddish variant
of adam.

This brokenhearted low chant from the throats of the Theresienstadt Jews —
Adam, adam, adam
— all in the shadow of death, all recently howling with mirth, now murmuring what may be their own dirge, stirs deeps in Natalie Henry that she never knew were there before her imprisonment. As he works into the florid cantorial passage, Udam’s voice sobs and swells like a cello. His eyes close. His body weaves before the little puppet stage. His hands stretch out and up. The agony, the reverence, the love of God and of humanity in his voice, are beyond belief in this man, who minutes before was performing the rawest ribaldry.

“Like a floating mote, a passing shadow…”

Udam
…
udam… udam
…

He rises on tiptoe, his arms stiffen straight upward, his eyes open and glare at the audience like open furnace doors:

“And like a DREAM…”

The fiery eyes close. The hands fall, the body droops and all but crumples. The last words die to a crushed whisper

“… that flies away.”

He never does an encore. He acknowledges the applause with stiff bows and a strained white face.

This wrenching liturgical aria, words and melody alike, once seemed to Natalie a strange, almost gruesome way to close an evening of entertainment. Now she understands. It is pure Theresienstadt. She herself feels the catharsis she sees on the faces around her. The audience is spent, satisfied, ready to sleep, ready to face another day in the valley of the shadow. So is she.

“What the devil is
that?”

A gray yellow-starred woolen suit lies across her cot. Beside it are lisle stockings and new shoes. A man’s suit and shoes are on Aaron’s cot opposite. He sits at the little table between the cots, poring over a large brown Talmud volume. He holds up a hand. “Just let me finish this.”

The
protectsia
hovering over them is most apparent here; a separate room for the two of them, though it is only a tiny space with one window, partitioned off with wallboard from a larger chamber, formerly the dining room of a prosperous Czech family’s private house. Beyond the partition hundreds of Jews are crowded in four-tier bunks. Here are two cots, a dim little lamp, a table, and a cardboard wardrobe like a telephone booth, the acme of ghetto luxury. Council officials do not live better. There has never been an explanation for this kind treatment, other than that they are
Prominente.
Aaron gets his food here, but not by standing in line. The house elder has assigned a girl to bring it to him. However, he scarcely eats. He seems to be living on air. Usually when Natalie returns there are scraps and slops left, if she cares to choke them down. Otherwise the people beyond the partition will devour the stuff.

Now what is this gray suit? She holds it up against her; excellent material, well cut; a fair fit, a bit loose. The suit exudes a faint charming rose scent. A woman of quality owned this garment. Alive? Dead? Transported?

Closing the volume with a sigh, Aaron Jastrow turns to her. His hair and beard are white. His skin is like soft mica; bones and veins show through. Ever since his recovery he has been placidly frail, yet capable of surprising endurance. From day to day he teaches, lectures, attends concerts and plays, and puts in a full day’s work on the Hebrew cataloguing.

He says, “Those things arrived at dinnertime. Quite a surprise. Epp-stein came by later to explain.”

Eppstein is Theresienstadt’s present head of the municipality, a mayor of sorts with the title of
Ältester.
Formerly a lecturer in sociology, and the head of the “Association of Jews in Germany,” he is a meek, beaten-down man, a survivor of Gestapo imprisonment. Trapped in subservience to the SS, he tries in his unnerved way to do some good, but the other Jews see him as hardly more than a puppet of the Germans. He has little choice, and little strength left to exercise what choice he has.

“What did Eppstein say?”

“We’re to go to SS Headquarters tomorrow. But we’re
not
in danger. It will be pleasant. We’re due for more special privileges. So he swears, Natalie.”

Feeling cold in her stomach, in her very bones, she asks, “Why are we going?”

“For an audience with Lieutenant Colonel Eichmann.”

“Eichmann!”

The familiar SS names around Theresienstadt are those of the local officers: Roehn, Haindl, Moese, and so forth. Lieutenant Colonel Eichmann is a remote evil name only whispered; despite the modest rank, a figure standing not far below Himmler and Hitler in the ghetto mind.

Aaron’s expression is kindly and sympathetic. He shows little fear. “Yes. Quite an honor,” he says with calm irony. “But these clothes do bode well, don’t they? Somebody at least wants us to look good. So let’s do that, my dear.”

M
ARK!
Haleakala, zero eight seven. Mark! Mauna Loa, one three two.” Crouched at the alidade, Byron was calling out bearings to a quartermaster writing by a red flashlight, as the
Moray
scored a phosphorescent wake on the calm sea. The warm offshore breeze smelled to Byron — a pleasant hallucination, no doubt — like the light perfume Janice often wore. The quartermaster went below to plot the bearings, and called up the position through the voice tube. Byron telephoned Aster’s cabin.

“Captain, the moon’s bright enough so I got a fix of sorts. We’re well inside the submarine restricted area.”

“Well, good. Maybe the airedales won’t bomb us at dawn. Set course and speed to enter the channel at 0700.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Say, Mister Executive Officer, I’ve just been going over your patrol report. It’s outstanding.”

“Well, I tried.”

“You’re no dud at paperwork, Briny. Not anymore. Unfortunately, the clearer you put the story the lousier it comes out.”

“Captain, there’ll be other patrols.” Aster’s irritable depression had been troubling Byron all during the return voyage. The captain had holed up in his cabin, smoking cheap cigars by the boxful, reading tattered mysteries from the ship’s library, leaving the running of the sub to the exec.

“Zero is zero, Byron.”

“They can’t fault you for aggressiveness. You volunteered for the Sea of Japan.”

“I did, and I’m going back there, but next time with electric torpedoes. Otherwise the admiral can beach me. I’m all through with the Mark Fourteen.” Byron could hear the slam of the telephone into the bracket.

Driving in a pool jeep to Janice’s cottage next day, Byron was afire to crush his sister-in-law in his arms and forget the patrol. Loneliness, the passage of time, the disappearance of Natalie, the warmth of Janice’s home, the quiet shows of affection by his brother’s pretty widow — all these elements were fusing into something like an undeclared romance, mounting in sweetness each time he came back from the sea. The flame was feeding on an explosive mixture of intimacy and unfulfillment. Guilt tormented Byron
over his flashes of thought about a life with Janice and Victor, if it should happen that Natalie never came back. He suspected Janice of harboring similar notions. Normal relationships can be wrenched out of shape or destroyed by the tensions and separations of war, and what Byron was experiencing was very commonplace just now, all over the world. Only his conscience pangs were slightly unusual.

Something was wrong this time. He knew when she opened the door and he saw her serious unpainted face. She was expecting him, for he had telephoned, but she had not changed out of a drab blue housedress, nor in any way smartened herself up; nor did she hand him the usual planter’s punch in welcome. He might have interrupted her at her cooking or cleaning. She said straight off, “There’s a letter from Natalie, forwarded by the Red Cross.”

“What! My God, finally?” Through the International Red Cross he had written several letters to Baden-Baden, with this return address. Everything about the envelope she handed him was disturbing: the flimsy gray paper; the purple block lettering of the address and of “N. HENRY” in a corner; the overlapping rubber stamps in different colors and languages, almost obliterating the Red Cross symbol; above all, the postmark. “Terezin? Where’s that?”

“Czechoslovakia, near Prague. I’ve telephoned my father about this, Byron. He’s talked to the State Department. Read your letter first.”

He sank on a chair and slit the envelope with a penknife. The single gray sheet was block-lettered in purple.