Fervor, page 9
“Elsie, listen to me. You must never do that again. Never. When your mother speaks to Zeide, you go nowhere near that room. Go play outside if you like, I don’t care, just stay away from the attic.”
“But I already know this stuff. They teach it in school.”
Later, when Eric told Hannah that he was frightened about the effect her work was having on the children, she thought he was overreacting. Elsie would have to learn these things someday. “We did, didn’t we?”
Eric was not appeased. “But not now, for God’s sake. Not like this.”
“Not now. So when?”
“Later!”
“And when the time does come, what’s the right way for her to learn about the mass extermination of her own family? You think her teachers are equipped to guide her through that?”
In the window, a gibbous moon sat on a bank of cloud. The last of the afternoon light faded from the sky.
“You think it’s important for him to tell his story before he dies. I get it. He needs to be heard. But you don’t have to write this stuff down. You don’t have to put it in a book and publish. This is our family. The whole world and his brother do not need to know.”
* * *
So far, my conversations with Yosef had been tantalising but insubstantial, and the narrative that was taking form was decidedly patchy. He’d given me some interesting details of Warsaw in the thirties, describing the lessons his mother gave, how the house rang out with bungled renditions of Beethoven and Liszt. He told me about the cold nights in the ghetto, the sudden and never-explained disappearance of his uncle, the first of the family to be murdered. Often, he contradicted himself. Sometimes he would say that no one knew anything about the camps, sometimes everybody knew. He described the train journey to Gehinnom, the cattle cars stuffed with people, the deaths along the way, the stench of piss and shit dulled only by the cold, how the first thing they did on arrival was toss out the corpses, someone’s sister, the old mute whose name nobody knew.
But of his experience of life in the camps, he was reticent.
“Tell me more about the lager,” I would say. “What was it like?”
“I told you hundred times! We were hungry and we were cold. One portion of bread a day is all you got, sometimes two if you could trade for someone. Or steal. We were all thieves. But everybody knows these things. You can watch it on the television.”
“Tell me a story, then. Something that happened there.”
“I don’t remember. Too much years.”
He said this despite having recounted various illuminating episodes. It was obvious he was hiding, and when I pressed him, he would derail the conversation. I heard that I was bringing up my children all wrong. I let Elsie get away with too much, and I allowed Gideon to be stupid.
One night, I awoke to a crash at the top of the house. I knew at once Yosef had fallen. Eric slept through it, so I crept upstairs to see if my father-in-law was all right. I found him on the floor by his bed, still wrapped in his duvet, groaning softly.
“Yes, yes, stop touching me,” he said. But even once I’d got him back into bed there was a wild terror in his eyes.
“Channah, I had a horrible dream.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t! I don’t remember. I only know I was back.”
“Where?”
“Back! Poyln.”
“Would you like some water?”
“No, sit down. I want to tell you. Things are coming back now. Things I didn’t think about for fifty years.”
I held his hands in mine as he told me the following story.
“There was a little boy. He was very small, and there was a gap in his front teeth. And he had colour on his face.” I asked if he meant the boy was black, but he said no, no. Yosef had been in England for decades and spoke the language fluently, but there were still words he lacked. I realised he was talking about a birthmark.
“The second I see him, I know. This is a boy from Warszawa, I saw this boy before. ‘What’s your name, little boy?’ I asked him. First Yiddish, then Polish. He didn’t speak. I tried French and German too. Comment tu t’appelles? Name? Eventually, he answered me. His name was Ariel.”
“What language was this?”
“Mamaloshen. Yiddish. I asked if he was scared, and he said yes, very scared. He didn’t find his parents. First mother was taken away, then he was split from father at selections. He didn’t tell me this, he just said he didn’t know where they were. But I knew.”
“And when you say ‘the selections’ you mean—”
“I told you this already. We lined up, and they said you go right, you go left. This one strong, he can work. But that one weak, get rid of him.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t a child always be—”
“That’s what I’m telling you. Listen! His father was young man, strong, so he could do some work.”
Yosef always told his stories angrily. To say that I was having trouble following, as I did now, was to risk an explosion.
“How come you don’t understand?”
“If this boy was selected for extermination—”
“Always children killed at once. They never let them live in the lager.”
“Yes, I understand, but why were you there? Had you been selected as well?”
“No, I was strong. Wait. You’re getting me confused. Why was I there? Yes, you’re right, I must have got selected. Maybe it was the time my foot got infection and I couldn’t walk so good. I say to the boy, ‘It’s ok. Take my hand. I’ll be your daddy now. Come with me, we seek your parents.’ And he was so trusting, he give me his hand. Children are like dogs, you know that? They decide the moment they see you they like you or they don’t like. Maybe it’s smell. Adults are different. You meet a man, he say, come on, impress me, then we see if we are friends. But children just know.”
“So where did you take him?”
Yosef didn’t answer this question. He was staring into the depths of the room.
“Did you find his parents?”
“You’re not listening. His mother was in woman’s camp. And his father… no one got to see their parents again. Do you understand? Not me, not Mendl, not no one.”
“I’m listening. Where did you go?”
Again, Yosef was silent. I squeezed his hand.
“I took him where we had to go. I said, ‘Don’t listen to anything people say. Everyone is scared here. Don’t talk to nobody, follow me. Have you said Shema this evening? Let’s say it now. Put your hand over your eyes like this.’ And we said the prayer together. Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad…”
With his sight covered by the palm of his right hand the better to concentrate his mind on the unity of God, Yosef recited the whole prayer, the prayer that Jews are commanded to say twice daily, the words with which we greet each morning, that we teach our children to recite before they go to sleep, and that we hope to say as our last words in this life, if our killers give us time to do so. My father-in-law, who had at least a smattering of six languages, spoke the most beautiful Hebrew. He recited like a poet. As those ancient words poured forth, I felt myself in holy company. I hope that lost child felt the same way, all those years ago, stranded in Gehinnom.
When he was done, I could see that he was crying. Fat tears slipped from under the hand which he had not removed on the second line of the prayer as custom dictates.
“And what happened then?” I asked.
“What do you think? I let go and he walked into the gas. Ariel was his name.” Yosef finally lifted his hand from his face. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose streaming. “I didn’t see him for fifty years, but I see him now. Right there.”
Yosef wasn’t pointing at his temple, the seat of memory, but to some dark place in the room before him. I looked, as though I too might see the terrified little boy among the shadows of that attic. But our ghosts are as private as our dreams, and I saw nothing.
Though I knew he wanted me to leave, I lingered. At this point in his life, Yosef’s mind was like a book whose pages kept being torn out by some careless vandal; there was every chance that by the morning, he’d have forgotten this whole incident. If I didn’t ask now, I might never find out.
“But what happened to you?” I said. “Didn’t you have to go with him?”
“No, no.”
“How did you get away?”
“Because I wasn’t selected. Don’t you understand? Never. I was strong and I could work, and they never selected me. In the ghetto I had my family, and there was Leutnant Beck, he looked out for me, and in the lager I had nobody. Mendl was lucky, he never saw that place. That’s a bad thing to say, but sometimes I think it’s true, he was the lucky one. Not me. I watched out. I picked up food. I kept my strength. I did what I was told. You see a little boy all on his own, crying for his parents, and you want to tell him it’s ok, everything is ok. Isn’t that normal? You would do the same thing, no? So I told him. I told all the little boys they would be ok. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Please, Channah, turn that thing off.”
From this talk, Hannah deduced her father-in-law was part of the Sonderkommando, a German term meaning “Special Squad.” Jews assigned to the Squad had the most repellent tasks necessitated by the sick logic of the death camps. They led the other inmates to the gas chambers. Afterwards, it was their responsibility to search the dead for concealed treasures, to rip gold from the mouths of corpses, and then to dispose of the remains. Not that this saved them from the common fate, as they well knew; among their duties as new recruits was to immolate their predecessors.
But there were certain privileges—better food rations, extra shirts, even booze.
“How did you end up in that position?” Hannah asked him. “Did Beck help you?”
“No more.”
“What happened in the ghetto? For three years you were never deported. Were you a member of the Jewish police?”
“I told you no, never, no.”
“What about the rebellion at Treblinka? That’s when you got out, right? Did you take part in organising? Or did you—”
“Enough!”
Hannah assured her father-in-law that she wasn’t here to judge him. She only wanted to understand exactly what had happened. He refused to answer any more questions, and it was several days before she got him talking again. Even then, Yosef was wary. He asked Hannah why she had to tape everything.
* * *
“Your story is important,” I explained. “I want it recorded.”
Yosef was perplexed. “You mean you’re going to play people these tapes? Who would want to hear an old man talk about his life?”
“I’m going to write it down. In a book.”
“No.”
“No?”
“This is my life, Hannah, it’s not your book.”
I had, of course, anticipated this resistance; it was one of my great fears as I set out on the project. And if he’d pushed back at the start, I might have given up. But since then, everything had changed. In the months before we began, I was jobless and depressed. For too long I had endured the daily confrontation with purposelessness. The setting down of Yosef’s life had reenergised me. Now I had it, work, real work, the kind I could throw myself into with my entire being. I do not wish to diminish my father-in-law’s reservations, or his fears, but I did think at the time—and I still think now—that he was wrong. History, be it yours, mine, or the next person’s, belongs to us all. And that’s what I told him.
“So you will write the book, even if I say no?”
“I’ve made up my mind.” Not only that. I had already spoken to my agent, pitched the idea to publishers.
“And the whole world will know what I did?”
“Anyone who reads will understand.”
“You think people are better than they are.”
Cynicism about human nature is a position I have always rejected. Despite everything, I believe, along with Anne Frank, that people are fundamentally good at heart. Life, otherwise, could not be endured. But my father-in-law had been through what he’d been through, and there was no contradicting him.
“And Gideon will read this?” he said.
“He’s not old enough.”
“But one day.”
I couldn’t lie to him. “One day, yes, I expect one day he will.”
“And Elsie too?”
“One day Elsie too.”
“And even little Tovyah?”
I nodded. His eyes closed and his face began to quiver as though waiting to receive a blow.
“Make me a promise,” he said. “When I’m dead, don’t stick me in the ground. Please. Set the body on fire. When people read about my life, I want to be dust and ashes. Destroy every piece of me, everything that’s left.”
“Eric will insist—”
“Dust and ashes, Channah.”
EIGHT
In the Talmudic elaboration of the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, rumour of Isaac’s death reaches Sarah before her husband and son return from the sacrifice unscathed. Overcome with grief, Sarah makes the conventional wish, that she herself had perished rather than her little boy. She then travels to Hebron in search of Abraham, planning to rain down all hell upon her child-murdering husband. But look as she might, she can’t find him. And so, giving up at last, she returns to her tent in the Negev, where she encounters the same man who told her earlier that her son was dead. It turns out he spoke too soon and wishes to correct his mistake; Isaac is alive and well. Baruch Hashem.
At which point in the story, Sarah dies.
The day after Elsie vanished, Hannah dialled Rabbi Grossman’s number, and this is what he told her.
“Why now?” Rabbi Grossman asked on the phone. “Why didn’t Sarah die when she got news of her bereavement? You may have heard of refeeding syndrome. When a starved person eats too much too quickly, the body can’t take it. Insulin levels soar, the heart runs wild. In extreme cases, fatal, instant death. It wasn’t grief that killed Sarah, but the resumption of ordinary happiness. Be cautioned, Hannah. Do not lose hope.”
She did her best to take the rabbi’s words to heart. She made calls to teachers, to parents of Elsie’s friends, to the police and to journalists. Everyone she knew, every professional contact she’d made, everyone was going to hear about this. If necessary, they would scour the Earth. To each person she called, she spoke quickly and calmly, giving instructions and making enquiries.
Sometime that afternoon, her own phone rang, and she snatched the receiver, eager for news. But it was only Sam Morris, Tovyah’s Hebrew teacher. Something had come up—there would be no class that weekend. Bloody fool. A little curtness was required to get him off the line.
Afterwards, she stood at the window, debating whether to put her fist through it. She remembered the rabbi’s words and she said her prayers. Adon ‘olam, ‘asher malakh, b’ṭerem kol yeṣir niv’ra.
Next morning, over a breakfast of greyish scrambled eggs congealing on burnt toast, Hannah told her sons that, yes, they would be going to school, just like yesterday, just like the day before that. When Gideon protested, she shouted him down. “I don’t care what people say. Do your work.” Tovyah asked why they were eating a cooked breakfast, it wasn’t the weekend. Gideon kicked his shin. The brothers started bickering, and only stopped when their father slammed both fists against the table. Though the food on Eric’s plate remained untouched, he stood up now in a single motion, sweeping his chair to the floor with a bang. He did not stop on his way out to right it. For a moment, no one moved. Then, with his father gone, Gideon helped himself to a slice of Eric’s toast. Tovyah put his hand on his mother’s arm. “When are we going to find Elsie?” he said.
Eric also ate nothing that night. He didn’t get back from work until they were halfway through dinner. When Hannah rose to serve him from the trays kept warm in the oven, he said, “Sit down, sit down. I’m not hungry.”
But she’d kept a portion back, specially, she said.
“Who asked you?” he said.
Tovyah asked his father why he’d stopped eating.
Eric cleared his throat. “Sometimes, when you want to focus your mind on God, you need an empty stomach.” He attempted to soften his tone. “You know. Like Yom Kippur.”
It seemed that along with his daily sustenance, Eric had given up talking to his wife. The last two nights he’d turned in early, then was up and gone before dawn broke. And when they were in the house together, he sought out whatever room she wasn’t in. Now was no exception; after refusing dinner, he made himself scarce.
Once she’d dismissed the boys from the table, Hannah went to find her husband. He was in his study, as she’d predicted, hunched over thin lines of Hebrew text, mouthing words under his breath. All he did to acknowledge Hannah’s presence behind him was to extract a rolled-up newspaper from his briefcase and hand it to her before he resumed his scrutiny of the page before him.
She didn’t have to unroll the paper to know what it was.
TEEN DAUGHTER OF MEMOIRIST GOES MISSING FROM TOP LONDON PRIVATE SCHOOL—POLICE SEARCH RIVERS
Elsie Rosenthal, aged 14, disappeared from Lady Hilary’s School for Girls on Tuesday afternoon around lunchtime, and has not been seen since.
Mother and author Hannah Rosenthal offers reward for information, and says family put their trust in God to bring back daughter.
It’s every mother’s worst nightmare. It started off just like any other wet November day…
Hannah hated those opening sentences, which she’d only intended as placeholders. But her editor liked them (such clichés were, after all, frictionless), and she’d lacked the energy to argue over prose styles. The important thing was that the message went out.
“Do you want to talk about this?” Hannah asked.
Eric didn’t even turn around.
She knew how it must look as she went about her daily rituals still talkative, still busy. A juggernaut, Eric had called her, during their courtship. Once she got going, nothing could stop her.
