Train doors opening to cold white daylight, blinding skies, blinding. We reached the concentration camp, guards and shouts and dogs. A uniformed man motioned Mother and Father to one side along with the Rotsteins. Here we are, Mother said. It can’t be so bad now. She laid a hand on Mrs. Rotstein’s shoulder, and Mrs. Rotstein made no motion to brush it away. Lilka and Halina and I stood on the other line, Halina and I straining to glimpse Mother and Father.
When Lilka spread her word about Karol it was only one week before the war, the radio counseled preparations day and night. The Germans might attack with gas, the announcer warned. Mother stocked our shop with gauze for face masks. Troops were gathered, I waited for news from Karol. But that afternoon Father was ready when I entered the shop. Without a word he began to beat me between cartons of gauze rolls stacked high as my shoulders. Mother watched for a time, then stood from her chair and rushed for Father’s arm. “Stop hitting her!” Father sat wheezing in a corner while Mother screamed. “A Catholic pig, how could you? Don’t you know they’d kill you for sport? Don’t you know what those people are like, they eat swine.” “Defile sabbath,” Father chimed in. “Defile sabbath,” Mother continued, “and what’s more, they drink like horses at a trough.” Father rose to his feet, his tread was full of menace. “You would love an uncircumcised animal? You are forbidden to leave this house. You are forbidden to meet him, I know you have plans but we will keep you here until you forget his name and he yours, we will keep you here until you forget your own name since you are so eager to bring shame upon it.”
And then, at the door, Halina. Her jaw swollen, a purple egg of bruise on her forehead threatening to engulf one eye. “Halina?” Mother stepping forward, fingers extended. Halina brushed her away. “They said my sister was defiling the Polish population.” Halina winced as she spoke. Her face contorted with pain, I would have rushed to her had Father not pinned my arm. “Catholic pigs,” Father said softly. “Catholic pigs,” Halina repeated as quietly, then her eyes burned into mine for a moment before she looked away. Running down her cheeks, two neverending ribbons of tears.
After the war, when I reached the new country Israel, they said to me. They said leave behind the past. They said, You’re in the Jewish homeland now; a new life. Let us then look to our future.
Halina’s tears, ribbons of living water until ghetto emptied her face of feeling and camp hollowed her body to a husk. Halina, receded into this unrecognizable frame.
My sister.
The Americans are coming, the stranger said as she held me back. How can you run toward this fire when the Americans are almost here. Every moment every second every beating of this heart. The Americans are coming to quench the fire.
Halina.
And now. Smoke. Rising to the ceiling, feathering to the walls, brushing these shuttered windows. Smoke, curling tendrils under my kerchief, and a rushing noise, flame singeing the air so I can barely breathe. Smoke billows in the dark hollows of this apartment, tumbles to such a blue sky.
My hands tremble so that I cannot clasp one to the other. Standing, I know what I must do. I open the door of this dim choking apartment. I make my way to the stair, sharp air pierces my lungs. One step, then another. The echoing of unsteady footfalls, pain behind my eyes. At each moment I might turn back. But it is too late, for I have knocked.
And the American opens the door. She is golden, smooth hair twisted upward to the heavens, blue eyes soft open face. I whisper my plea. Fire, I say. Can You smell it? Can You hear, this wind this fire? It is here, oh here come quickly before they destroy what You have come to save, come find us before we blow away on the wind of the flame.
Fire, I call out to Her, fire I dance, fire brims from my lips scorching, blinding. It is a fire song that I chant to the American, swaying and weaving before Her among these flames.
It happens so quickly I have no time to prepare. I’ve just put a teakettle on the stove when there is a shuffling of feet outside the apartment door, and one soft knock.
The woman from downstairs wears an old brown sweater, elbows nearly transparent. She has a kerchief wound around and around her hair, the whole thing comically askew, as if she had wrapped a cabbage rather than a head. When I swing the door wider she flinches, and I think she is going to run away again, down the stairs and back to the perch behind her door. But she clasps her hands at her waist and stands.
I take a deep breath. “Shalom,” I say.
Now she looks to the floor, bashful. Almost imperceptibly, she sways.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
There is a long pause. Then she speaks one word in a heavily accented Hebrew, and she speaks it quietly enough that a moment passes before I understand that what she has said is fire. She looks at me helplessly; this single word has exhausted her.
“Oh God,” I hear myself say in English. “Where?”
She doesn’t answer. She waits, alert to my every response.
Beside the kitchen sink is the basin I have been using to wash lentils for dinner. I dump the contents and send water splashing from the tap. “I’m coming,” I call, my voice quavering.
My neighbor stands at attention.
Fire, in this building. My mind races with possibilities: windows, doors, hoses. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” I chant. The basin is only half full, but I take it from the faucet and brush firmly past her down the stairs, water sloshing my arms, my sandals slipping on tile.
The door to her apartment is open. In the entryway I nearly trip over a small suitcase standing on the floor, and as I regain balance my heart pounds. My shirt is stained with water. I hear the woman’s footsteps behind me.
In the small, dim bedroom is a single bed, and a dresser with a dusty television on top. I turn on my heel and see a half-kitchen, a lone empty pot on the stove. I wheel again, breathing nothing but stale air. I set the basin roughly on the floor and brush past the woman once more; I run to the stairwell and in a panic I pull a breaker switch. The stairwell light is extinguished, the hum of appliances on the floor is stilled. Now even the low buzz of the stairway light is absent. I smell nothing. The woman and I stand together in the silenced apartment. Fear fills the darkness between us.
She waits.
Bewildered, I turn my back on her. I check the stove jets and the electrical outlets. I check the overhead light bulb, as if there might be some fire trapped inside waiting to burst out. “Is it something electric?” I ask, but she says nothing. “Something with your stove? Your refrigerator?”
She does not appear interested in my questions. She stares at me openly and without shame. Her expression is adoring, expectant.
And now I think maybe I smell smoke too.
We stand together in the bedroom, sniffing air like two animals mapping out danger. The apartment is stifling, I am aware of the sound of our breathing.
By the light leaking through the shutters I see that there are tears on her cheeks, breaking into rivulets as they cross the fine wrinkles of her face.
“Do you know where the fire was?” I enunciate as kindly as I can. “I don’t see any fire. Do you know where it was?”
She opens her mouth, and her voice is dry with disuse. “Was a fire.”
“Here?”
She nods.
The apartment is utterly, impossibly silent. I slide a sandaled foot on the tile, just to hear the sound. “It’s over now,” I say to her. “The fire is over.”
She shakes her head, gently. “No.”
“Maybe we ought to open a window.” I start toward the far wall. “Let’s get some air in here. Then we can find the problem.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Should I do that?” I ask with my hand on a window lever. “Open a window?”
She sits on her bed.
I force open first the window, then the shutter, and breathe deeply. The air from the street is like cool water after a long thirst, and I stand at the window for longer than I intend. On the bed the woman cowers from the ligh
t. Leaving the window ajar, I close the shutter so that only a few thin lines of sun enter.
“How about some coffee? I can make some coffee if you like.”
She ignores me. Her kerchief twists pitifully on her head and her narrow shoulders are slumped as though she’s in pain.
I search for words of comfort. “It’s going to be all right, you know.” I don’t know what exactly I mean by this, but I speak on all the same. “It’s all right,” I reassure. “Everything is.”
She looks up sharply.
Uneasy, I continue. “I want to thank you for your gifts. The psalms are very interesting.” I open my hands to her. “You shouldn’t worry about a false fire alarm, these things happen. It’s better to be safe,” I tell her, “than sorry.”
Her arms are folded across her lap. Gently she hugs her elbows.
“You can come upstairs anytime. It’s quiet in this building during the day. But I’m home, usually. I spend a lot of time at home. You can visit, if you like.”
She is listening keenly, her head tilted to one side.
“My boyfriend hits me,” I say.
She nods.
I step closer. “I don’t know what to do.”
Her face is bright with faraway thoughts.
“Can you help me?”
My words hang in the hushed bedroom.
She gazes past me toward the window. “I will tell,” she pronounces. “Will tell you everything.”
Her shoulders heave as she draws a breath.
“Will be no secret left unsaid.” She lays out the words one by one, as if she has been preparing this speech and must not be misunderstood. “And when I tell, you will fix. You will make us whole.” She stares into my eyes. Her shoulders slump with exhaustion. She says, simply, “Then we will be free.”
She has spoken with such intensity that I find myself frightened, although I can’t say of what.
The flutter of her eyelids tells me I am dismissed.
I hesitate. I want to ask what she means by all of this; I think she has pledged her help, but I’m not sure. Would it be rude to ask for an explanation?
She has tucked her chin into her shoulder like a bird preparing for sleep.
At length I rise to go. She invited me here, I remind myself. She came to get me. Surely there will be other invitations; surely this is only a beginning. I take the basin from the floor and start toward the stairwell.
But before I reach it she speaks once again, a slight forlorn figure in the airless apartment. “I have prepared. Have read your signs. I have waited, now you will make it right. Will you promise? Have you truly come for us?”
Stripes of sun float on the floor, a dizzying raft of light in the darkness. “I’ll come visit,” I promise.
On the way out of the apartment I flip the power switch back to its usual position. After a pause to sniff the air one final time, I climb the stairs to the third floor. When I have reached my apartment I look through the doorway cautiously, like a burglar crossing the threshold of a stranger’s home. Whoever lives here has left the apartment in a hurry; the door is flung wide, and I can see straight through to the back windows and outside to the palm tree. Stepping in, I see a teakettle on the stove, spewing steam toward the ceiling with a sound that is at once comforting and dangerous.
Part Four
12
Now. How the days pass like clouds. Now that I know the American is here. Dawn after dawn whispers Her name, night upon night utters praise.
You are here.
You are with me.
For when I called out from my distress You came. You showed me Your steadfastness, Your basin of water: a third and final sign. You will lift me from the dust, from the trash heaps You will raise Your faithful.
American.
How long I have waited. But it has not been in vain.
Shuddering nights, days like thunder, I am ever mindful of Your presence. You are at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. I have lain counting my bones and I was despised, but now the mountains skip, seas rejoice, thirsting hills prepare for Your rain.
Now, O American. Now. You have come.
May the words of my mouth and the prayer of my heart be acceptable in Your eyes.
And I will tell You everything. How Feliks delicate Rotstein son became a ghetto smuggler, hollow-cheeked quick-eyed boy. Sunday he sneaked past the wall to bargain his mother’s last dresses for food, Monday transport seized his family. He reached their room with arms full of withered potatoes there was no sound.
I will tell You. From the scroll of my days I will read.
How Grandmother stood over Uncle Hayyim when Germans came, Hayyim who could not keep his lips from quivering as he slumped on his packed suitcase. Germans pounding up the stairs, trembling grip of her hand on his shoulder. As soldiers reached the landing Grandmother called out in Yiddish, You know what the problem is with your people’s Christ? He was a bastard baby, you hear me? A momzer. That’s the whole trouble with you people. Move, the German signaled, and Grandmother followed Hayyim dragging her suitcase behind, because her steps lagged the soldier stopped in his tracks, raised his gun to the center of her back.
May the words of my mouth and the prayer of my heart. I will tell You, O American, and You will know. How Uncle Hayyim’s lame legs danced before bullets. How armbands grew dear, we gazed with envy: linen for the rich and paper for the poor, how we learned to shield them from filth for a soiled band would earn a soldier’s beating. How Karol searched deserted houses and damp forest for my family only to learn we had been taken, news of his devotion reached me in ghetto walls, days before news of his unit’s execution.
Restore the luster to my eyes, O American. Lest I sleep the sleep of death.
Along the street in their shtiebls the blacks sing songs of memory. On my ceiling the American treads forgetfulness.
How long, how long, time spread out its hands and was stilled. Americans, we called Your name under our breath. How long, winter froze the mind, the air echoed with American bombs dropped on German war factories but You did not turn Your face upon us, You did not bomb train lines that brought prisoners and gas, O Americans when will You bend the sky and come down?
And then You came, thick cloud beneath Your feet. How we gazed mute at Your airplanes, Your bombs, Your stamping marching feet; Your candy bars sweet as death.
It is my final offering that I leave at Your doorstep, it is my greatest treasure and all that remains. I give it to You, my American. I bequeath to You all that is mine. I have waited so many days and now You, American, will understand. You will mend pain, send rain, You will make this rent world whole. Now at last You are with me, above me, in my hands my ears, the wind in my hair. At the blast of the ram’s horn I will come to You, at the sound of the shofar I will tell You all.
I adore You O American, my strength, O American, my crag, my fortress, my rescuer, my matchstick my chocolate my rock in whom I seek refuge, my shield, my Jesse Owens my Gone With the Wind my mighty champion, my haven newspaper soup my new Coca-Cola, my redeemer.
I shall dwell in the house of the American all the days of my life.
Sunday we leave for the desert.
The week has passed more quickly than I expected, each day a miracle. Last Sunday, Gil stayed home from the gallery to put the finishing touches on his project. He worked all day and through the night, stopping to nap on the living room sofa when necessary. When, at dawn, he joined me in bed for an hour’s rest, I could see in the gray light that his face was haggard with hope and worry. “Your feet are cold,” I told him, and as I tucked mine beneath his he murmured his thanks. On Monday he told the gallery manager he’d be out the rest of the week; I brought his breakfast to the living room, set his plate on the sofa without a word. He didn’t reprimand me for entering, didn’t even look up from his drawing table, but later he came to the kitchen and kissed my forehead. “I think this is going to work,” he said.
That afternoon, as I shopped for our supper, I
decided to walk the extra blocks to buy pastries for dessert. Gil’s words resounded in my head, and I sifted them for each possible meaning. I remembered things he had promised to show me months before, the day trips and picnics we had deferred for when his work schedule permitted. I remembered private jokes from the spring, and the way he made me laugh.
My plan to approach the woman downstairs for her advice could wait until the next day. I bought enough pastries for a family of ten.
Tuesday Gil was animated. For hours I listened to the uneven beat of his footsteps as he traveled from one sketch to the next. I left the apartment only to check the mailbox; when I found it empty, I returned to my station in the kitchen. Occasionally I heard Gil tear a sheet of paper. When he opened the door to accept a glass of coffee, I glimpsed dozens of drawings on a yellowed, uneven sort of paper, laid out on every available spot of floor.
In the kitchen I opened my Israel guidebook to the map of the Arava and traced our route into the desert with the white crescent of my fingernail.
Wednesday Gil left the living room to check on me every few hours. I made falafel and salad and fresh pitas for dinner; the timing of the dough’s rising meant I couldn’t visit the woman downstairs that afternoon. Which was just as well. I hadn’t yet gotten around to deciding what to say to her. Instead I wrote to my mother about our vacation plans. It’s been a while since your last letter, I added as a postscript. I hope things at the Center aren’t too hectic.
All Thursday evening Gil’s early sketches whispered from the clotheslines in the living room as he packed the finished pieces for transportation. When he came into the kitchen he looked as though he could barely contain his excitement. “I don’t want you to see them until they’re installed.” He touched my cheek. “I want you to be surprised at the opening.”
From a Sealed Room Page 26
