From a Sealed Room

by Rachel Kadish

  Tami stands rubbing her shoulders beside the sink.

  Still chuckling, Moti shifts in his chair. Nachum pats his friend’s forearm absently. “It’s all right,” he says. “It’s all right.”

  Soon Nachum and Moti leave, and Fanya goes to pick up Ariela from her scout program. Tami sits at the table. I know it is time for me to leave. As Nachum was going out I heard him repeat that the apartment looked wonderful, and although Tami did not seem to hear him, he lingered a moment before following Moti into the stairwell. If I leave Tami alone in the apartment, perhaps Nachum will return and they will speak. But for some perverse reason I stay. I sit across from Tami and cradle my empty coffee cup in my hands. If I were the person I pretend to be in my letters, I tell myself, I wouldn’t just sit here like an idiot. I would use every minute to learn.

  I open my mouth with no idea what will come out. “Do soldiers like Dov get weekends off?” I ask.

  Tami blinks. “It depends.”

  “And what if he chooses the army for his career? Will he have regular time off then?”

  “It depends.”

  Wondering whether anything outside of her husband’s failings will engage this woman’s interest, I try another tack. “How long has Fanya taught singing?”

  “Years.”

  “It’s great that she does that.”

  Tami says nothing.

  “I mean, I always used to wish my mother liked the arts. I danced, in high school. College, too.” I examine the brown ring at the bottom of my coffee cup. “But doesn’t Fanya live in Tel Aviv?”

  Tami nods.

  “Then why is she always in Jerusalem?”

  “It’s summer. The concert halls in Jerusalem are cooler.”

  “That’s why?”

  Tami shrugs.

  “So—if you don’t mind my asking—why does Fanya live in Israel?” As I speak, Tami looks at me warily. “She talks about Europe all the time. And it seems she’s the first in line for every European cultural event that comes through Jerusalem. The way she talks, it almost sounds like she wants to be there, not here.”

  Tami picks something from under one fingernail.

  I continue. “I know a lot of Jews stayed as far as possible from Europe after World War Two, but Fanya doesn’t seem to be bothered by any of that. She doesn’t seem to be bothered by . . . by trauma.” As soon as I speak the word, I regret it. It sounds like something out of a television talk show, and not at all what I meant to say.

  Tami is watching me. Her light-hazel eyes reveal nothing. “Fanya doesn’t care about trauma,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “It doesn’t touch her, it never did.”

  I don’t know what to say. I try a different topic. “What was your father like?”

  “Quiet.”

  “Nothing like Fanya, then?”

  Tami purses her lips.

  “What did he do?”

  “He was a businessman, but mostly he did relief work with the war refugees.” Before I can ask anything further, Tami heads me off. “I barely remember him.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Tami seems poised to make a tart reply, but instead she turns on me with a question. “Do you and your mother get along?”

  There is only the briefest pause before my answer. “Yes.”

  “Then why are you here while she’s sick?”

  “She’s not sick. She’s doing fine. It makes her happy that I’m here.” I trace the chipped corner of the tabletop with my fingernail. “Her cancer came back last fall. But she’s doing very well now. The doctors think she’s going to be just fine.” I force a laugh. “I guess she’s just the opposite of Fanya. She wants to come back to visit Israel more than just about anything, she won’t bother going to Europe even though it’s cheaper.”

  “Then why doesn’t she come, if she’s feeling well?”

  Now it’s my turn to shrug. “Her work.”

  “Have you invited her?”

  “I’m sure she’ll let me know if she’s free to visit. For now she just likes hearing about Israel through my letters. You know, I write about all the things going on here. All the issues.”

  Tami doesn’t seem impressed. She looks away, bored. “You think I’m humorless,” she says, “because I don’t gush over Fanya.”

  It’s a feeble answer, but it’s out of my mouth and there’s no taking it back. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re charmed by her, like the rest of them,” Tami says flatly. “You think you’d be thrilled with Fanya if you were in my shoes. But you don’t ask your own mother to come visit you.”

  “It’s not that I’m not inviting her. She can’t come because of her work.”

  Tami rises to return the milk to the refrigerator.

  I feel my pulse pounding in my temples. Before I can stop myself I am talking at her back. “At least I try.”

  “Try?” And for the first time I know that I have Tami’s complete attention, for she nearly chokes on the word. “What kind of trying do you want from me?”

  The words come haltingly, but Tami’s bluntness creates an opening into which I can say anything. So I say what I have no business saying. “Maybe you ought to give Fanya a chance. Or Nachum. He wanted to make it up to you before, he just didn’t know how.”

  Tami opens the refrigerator door. She sets the milk on the shelf and closes the door firmly. Then she says more than I have ever heard her say at a stretch. “What’s the point?” The desolation in her voice is so complete that I find myself trying to shut out her words. “After the miscarriages after Dov, do you think Fanya tried? She sailed in from Tel Aviv for an afternoon each time, she said, ‘You’ll be all right, Tami. You always could take care of yourself.’ Checked her purse for bus fare to Tel Aviv, patted me on the shoulder, and walked out the door.” Tami draws a deep breath, then releases it. She eyes me with what might be satisfaction) “‘Give Fanya a chance’? I don’t believe in new beginnings. Look around you. People get stuck and they stay stuck.”

  We’re both silent. Then Tami looks down to the floor and points a sandaled foot at the newspaper. “Everyone talking about new beginnings, and do you know what? I don’t believe any of it is going to happen.”

  I stare at the headlines, the worn sandal straps, Tami’s narrow toes. “Maybe you and Fanya can change things between you. These things aren’t impossible.” I grope for words. “My mother believes in new beginnings. She works at a place where she has to.” I’ve already said too much; Tami’s gaze drifts to the window. But whatever she may think of me, I want her to understand at least this one thing. “She’s the strongest person I know.”

  Tami says nothing, and I realize that the conversation is over. As I get up to leave, I know that there will be no hard feelings. Tami has spoken her mind and I’ve spoken mine. She won’t waste her energy bearing a grudge, and I take peculiar solace in her indifference.

  “Dov sent a message,” Tami says. “He wants to know are both you and your boyfriend coming to the desert.”

  I lift my coffee cup, but instead of taking it to the sink I stand motionless. “He really wants me to come?”

  Tami’s answer is brutally faint. “Didn’t he say he wants you to come.”

  “Why?” The question is a demand for honesty. And I know that Tami, of all people, will not disappoint me.

  She meets my eyes, an artless woman caught in a thin band of sunlight in this Jerusalem kitchen. “I don’t try to guess why he wants anything, anymore.”

  No, Lilka. No, it cannot be so. But Lilka says yes. Shakes her curls. Look, there. Look. She stands in her school uniform and stretches a pointing hand. Look, America is burning.

  No, you have misunderstood, I tell Lilka. That cannot be. American footsteps caused the fire in camp but then Americans came to stop it. Americans bring salvation, how can America burn? Lilka insists, but I stop my ears and will not hear her. You are wrong, I whisper, it cannot be.

  “It can be,” Karol says. My apartment is gone, Lilka has
vanished, I search for her in vain. Now I stand in woods by the river and I smell the machine oil that streaks his trousers. I turn to Karol, I reach to brush his rolled woolen sleeves. “It can be,” he repeats, and his thick hands are helpless with gentleness. I watch the horizon of cloth stretch across the width of his shoulders. “Why do you say it’s impossible,” he chides, “for a non-Jew to love a Jew? I know it is possible. So answer me only this. Is it possible, is it possible that a Jew loves a non-Jew?” His voice teases, but in his face a sudden stillness. “Little girl, is it possible she loves him already?”

  It was after the party, hail melting in gutters, street punctuated with white pockmarks, that he first stood before me. My head ringing with change: morning fading to afternoon, the guests one by one departing, and then Halina calling her final good-byes. Halina holding steady a brave smile, helped onto a train by a uniformed porter who swung her suitcase wide. Exhaustion drew my shoulders to earth. It was the last of the trash from the party that I carried now on my hip, down the alley and he stood waiting. Easily he lifted the heavy wooden lid from the garbage bin. Fair-haired goy, Gentile boy, I dropped my eyes and did not look. How Halina would have smiled at the size of his boots but she was gone, I was alone now, I could not show her this Gentile stranger. I waited for him to step aside. And then, he spoke my name. How could I not look? Up and up into a face the heavens made for receiving their rain, a blond brow to furrow at faraway thunder. Cheeks flushed at their crests like hilltops crooned with buds, blue eyes that would lift in steady gratitude. And the curious smile as he held high the lid, one corner of his mouth rising in greeting, the other tucked down in humor. “I know you,” he said.

  His name Karol, and he asked only to walk me to the river and back. Our feet made faint prints in packed earth, hail melted quiet rings into the darkening soil. As the path curved back toward town he slowed, he said You are the girl who makes up stories. You walk by the river, you step under the trees and dream fairy tales, then you tell them to your sister. But perhaps, he said, perhaps since your sister is gone you will be silent. His solitary voice seeded the twilight, I stood still to listen. Perhaps, he said, I might someday hear one of your stories.

  A week after I meet him I have shuttered the Gentile in memory, he is a tale untold and so the world shines autumn yellow and does not believe in him. During my afternoon walks I too cannot recall the sound of his voice, the span of his boots on cobblestone. I work in the shop, I lie awake in a deserted room. I notice one evening that I too have grown invisible, without Halina I am a story unspoken and no one sees.

  Then a Sunday afternoon and his shirt smelling stale and dangerous, the smell of incense swooning from the dark stone doorways of churches. Yet he, wearing danger in the fibers of his clothing, stands patient awaiting my greeting. How long he must have walked from their village’s church, flecks of mud on his Sunday trousers. Hat in chafed hands. I lift my head to him in recognition. May I walk with you? he asks. We cross narrow streets and leave sunlight behind as we step into woods: a Gentile boy and I, two passing cloud-shadows no one sees. I’ve watched you for a long time, he says. Only a few moments, he says, and then I will turn and begin my walk back to the village. Let me tell you a story now, I will tell you about my father’s farm. And perhaps someday you will tell me a story in exchange.

  Halina, I breathe when she comes for her first holiday. Halina I must tell you. Words cluster and beat inside me, how shall I utter a thing no one will want to hear?

  Halina watches my struggle for words, then as if she tears her own heart she speaks. I know, she says, her slim arms loose and helpless at her sides. I know, you have met with a Gentile boy. Shifraleh, do you love him? My sister’s breath sings ragged, my sister’s lovely hands lift and drop, repentant. If Mother and Father should find out, she says.

  Karol, touching my chin until I look up into still blue eyes still blue heavens. I will wait for you again next week, he says. I will stand beneath the bridge until you come and we can walk, will you walk with me once more?

  Karol is like rain, I tell Halina. He comes to meet me in hush and whisper. When he is gone there is peace, and a stirring of things beginning fresh. He is the stranger who teaches, the Gentile who listens. Karol shows me the newspaper that he reads, dark print curled in his hands. He works all day on the farm but at night he reads about what he has seen while bringing the harvest into Warsaw. He studies machines, Halina, he will bring machines to the farm so that his family will not have to work so terribly hard. He will show his family they do not have to be afraid of new things, and when he does then we will share a life.

  Halina, rosy with University, has grown pale, she has fallen into a well of silence. From deep she looks at me, her eyes are moons reflecting the uncertain glimmer of my words. Shifra remember what this would mean, she begins. A Gentile, a Catholic. Remember what they did to Uncle Hayyim.

  But now Halina stops, she is heavy with words unspoken. She bows her head. I want only your happiness, she says. And I see now. You are so happy when you tell of him, I know your voice Shifra and I hear him living there. Is it, perhaps? Is it perhaps possible? She reaches for my shoulder, she is a blind girl groping for a handhold. She is my fearless sister whom they cannot stop from dreaming of charts and tables, her throat is bare in the new fashion she has brought from University. A soft white cotton—Father has forbidden it and I have seen Mother take the blouse from Halina’s suitcase in secret and iron it with admiration.

  Shifra, she says. If you truly want to be with him, then I will help you.

  Yes, I say, Halina. Yes I love.

  Oh but Lilka takes my arm and Halina is gone. The forest fades as well, Karol drops his hand, he is helpless clay. America is burning, Lilka says to me in the harsh yellow light of my apartment. Karol, I cry out his name. I listen for his receding steps on the damp dirt path. But it is only Lilka again now, Lilka as she was in camp before the bullets took her, now she quivers with fear in the stale air of my apartment. America is burning, she insists. Hunger has stretched her face until it is taut with surprise, her eyes watch from deep in their hollows as if she is an old woman and not a girl. I know she would laugh if I set a mirror before her. But there are tears in her eyes, I do not dare. Someone must put out the American fire, she mouths.

  Lilka, you are wrong. Don’t you remember, I charge her. Don’t you remember. The Americans are not burning. The Americans come to put out the flame.

  In camp those who would have cried out the rumor like gulls instead opened their mouths and summoned unknown strength to whisper. Americans. The Americans are coming. Guards’ faces drew tight with fear. The Americans, thousands of Americans, closer with every step every second every beating of this stone this heart.

  There was afire. Lilka, the Americans did not start it, can you understand? The camp guards, the camp guards fearful of the blank palms of their own hands, doused the records house in gasoline. They stood singly, they watched the evidence of their victory swallowed in layers of fire. Women on work detail beside the building were painted with flames, how they pivoted with fantastic strength as they burned, some leapt out of the building’s flames and some in, it was impossible to tell which leapt from and which into fire.

  I was across the barren square when the flames shot to open blue sky. Women danced in fire and I ran toward the flames. I ran, I danced, I would have plunged into flames with the writhing women. I will dive into the embrace of flame I will rest in the peace of death. But an arm wrapped my chest, wrenched me back. “Americans,” this skeleton clutching me hissed. “The Americans will come. They are coming to save us. If you believe, if you last a few days longer, the Americans will come.”

  Americans, bringers of antiseptic and water. Americans, round faces contorted from a stench I no longer smelled, one poured a full can of shining water over his own head, a can of water wasted into hard earth only to rid him of our touch. “We will make you well,” a freckled American soldier said. “We will make you whole again,
we will make—”

  “Drink,” said his companion. “Slowly. A little soup at a time.”

  Lilka, do you understand now, the Americans did not make the fire. It came because they came, but they were not to blame. The Americans promised to free us from past, they promised us a future.

  Lilka reaches out as if to touch my face. I must be patient with her. The questions we never asked each other, now she wishes to ask. The things we did not say, circles of regret. She is sorry she has waited so long to speak. How could you keep such a secret as a non-Jew without anyone knowing, she asks now. Shifra. How did you speak to him? Could you really have loved him?

  Let me tell you his stories, Lilka, I begin. I will tell you his stories and mine, I will explain all. About Karol, about your brother Feliks and his poor memory for the face of a Gentile boy who beat him at the side of a road he could not describe. And more, Lilka. At last you will hear every secret, for now I will hold nothing back from you.

  But Lilka is no longer listening. America is burning, she whispers. Helpless, she raises a hand and points. At the television. Here, in my apartment. And I look to the television at last, and it is true what Lilka says. America, burning. We watch together in silence, her fingertips caressing the loose buttons of my sleeve. The Israeli announcer announces and he says that it is a city of angels, Los Angeles of America, he says, consequences of last year’s riots are still apparent in—Community rebuilding efforts have done little to change the—Now he gives way to an American announcer and there are subtitles but I do not read, I watch only the lips of the American announcer that waver in the heat of a city of flame behind him. On the television, black forms twist against streets of fire. An American future burning. These blacks are not like ours, they have grown tired of waiting for their redemption, now they dance before an orange-lit sky. Leaping against fire, leaping out of and into fire as we did.