From a Sealed Room

by Rachel Kadish

  A journey on foot, a wagon across a border by night; a train to a port city, seasons upon seasons of waiting for passage. While we waited, strangers traded news of battles, of the nation born. Then, tight-knuckled nights in a tossing ship. I will marry, a girl whispered in the ship’s darkened cabin. Halina, we lay on bunks as wide as the stinking slats in camp, only each of us had her own—such a wide and smooth space it was, without the crush of shrinking bodies. The girl told a story of a man met inside DP camp. Tasting the word husband, so unfamiliar in this hollow-eyed dark, the others around me stretched tentative fingers to the corners of their wide berths. Perhaps a child? Laughter, spilling from one bunk onto another. Such a thought. A child. Girls reached under thin covers to touch bony hips.

  They might leave you behind, Halina, but I would not. I would not embrace this new-minted country without you.

  And when at last we reached the Israeli port, the others sprang from the ship as if they had not retched seasick for days, as if they were mountain goats and not the empty shells of girls. Come dancing with us. Come to the shore this afternoon, there is a picnic for the young people from Galicia. There will be men, there will be bathing in the sea. Halina we stepped onto land and were embraced by sights and smells, by palm trees and orange groves of our sudden state. A state, they told us, only recently saved from certain death, just as you have been.

  Bright sun, brighter than the flash of a thousand newsbulbs. A joke ages in the making: Jews with a homeland. The laughter burst its confines, rang from every swaying tree. From rolls of wire, cement mixers vomiting sidewalk. And how the bus rocked along new-paved roads of our new-paved country: cracked already, and uneven. We passed beneath rippling blue and white of this Jewish sky, a sky that fluttered above swaying cypresses tall as flagpoles. The girls from the boat sang verse after verse.

  Home at last, the matron said.

  Halina, I wanted to hear only the sound of my own voice, reciting your life. The other girls from the relief agency lodgings learned quickly to move away when they saw me coming. They borrowed one another’s clothing to wear to their dances and did not invite me again. Alone I walked the Haifa shore, I explained you aloud as my shoes filled with sand, with every step I sank deeper.

  A position in Jerusalem was found, an apartment where I might sleep. Days passed without speech in the dressmaker’s shop. Outside, a world of busy builders. Cheering and weeping, rallies and rage. Through the static on the post office radio as I waited in line, a voice calling for reason. This country must move forward from—There is only one path toward our—Accepting German reparations is the way to—

  Crowds shouting betrayal in the streets. Arab eyes shuttered with rage.

  Halina, I sewed at the dress shop with the others, all day we worked in the quiet sunlit shack. How many of them pretended to life and how many did not need to pretend I could not know. Each morning I knotted my kerchief tight lest memory escape. I walked and ate, I turned my head with the others as if I too answered to We. We, young and reciting stanzas of hope. We who saw only clear unblemished horizon, waves caressing the brow of the country, and children that grew and grew and were bolder than any children ever before, each would be more beautiful to make up for the lost.

  And again and again was war, Halina. War in Sinai—Israeli sol diers raid enemy post at—Terrorists captured by—Battle in the Old City—War upon war, suspicious packages must be reported; sleep tilled my head at the bus stop, my grocery bag forgotten on the ground. I stood with you, Halina, beside the river, I told you a fairy tale and you smiled. A man called out in alarm. Suspicious Object, he cried. Who owns this grocery bag? Whose is it?

  I was not We, Halina. I was yours and you were mine. I would not answer to their calls. I would stay with you, I would live with you until you were well and lived again.

  The bomb workers reached the bus stop, they cleared the sidewalk. With a crowd I watched them advance upon my bag of onions and potatoes, although they hid the explosion in their metal box I saw it clearly: fragments of brown and white flesh scattered on these stones, pieces that would never fit together again.

  Don’t dwell on the past, the others said.

  So many years I fell silent. How could I speak what no one wanted to hear? Only after they brought the man for hanging did narrow gates open on our tales, but still no day was long enough, no sky high enough to hold what must be said aloud. Eichmann, Sabras spat the name in the streets. Then boarded their buses, embraced their children, ate a next meal. We must turn our backs on what is past, the girls at the dress shop insisted. See how our roots grow strong in each other?

  But I would never let you die. Halina I would not forsake you, ever. And I know that you would not leave me, only that once to keep from marrying Turkevich did you betray me and, Halina, I understand, you did not mean it. I know that you did not.

  Halina, I had no will to live with the living. I carried you with me, how could I set you down? And when they fought their War of Atonement I left the dress shop and retreated to my apartment at last to hold fast to my own soul. Halina, I closed myself in my apartment to await our American with all my devotion, I trusted in Her. I had no other. Alert sirens called me to judgment but I was guilty of no crimes; I waited for my salvation chanted sun-remembering rhymes.

  I made myself your keeper, tied tight my kerchief lest memory escape, and the aching of my head all those days was small price to pay. I knew if I was faithful then She would come. The American would believe in you with all Her heart, Her soul, all Her means. Every story I would tell Her, every story She would heed. So many nights and years I prepared for Her coming: our past would be redeemed, sister, the light restored to our eyes.

  O American, guard us like the apple of Your eye.

  Here at the building, green leaves cling to woody vines. I look up into snarled treetops, sun shears across my vision until this white unforgiving light empties the world of all else.

  I did not expect the American’s arm to be so soft. But it was, Halina. Flesh like a child’s, easily bruised. When I squeezed I felt the bone. Still I had faith in Her power.

  In my apartment the air is stale. My legs tumble beneath me, I sit.

  Feliks how dare you come to me now? Fair-haired Rotstein boy in short pants, your knees bruised from mischief. You stand uncertain before me, a boy timid of truth. Your shame was never known, Feliks. I might have told tales like your elder sister Lilka, but I did not. I told none that Father beat you in the shop for seeing what you should not have seen, I told none that you made up a lie because you were frightened of him. Bruised, you became a schoolyard hero for weathering a Gentile boy’s blows. Feliks you never wanted the full truth and so you did not, after all those years you did not ask me the one question you should have asked. Do you not think I knew you were in love with her, when she went to University? Do you not think I saw how you stared at her during her farewell party, how you memorized my sister in her blue dress? You never had a chance, Feliks. Halina did not love you, to her you were only a little boy. And then came war. Even in ghetto you tried to smuggle extra morsels to my sister, and when she gave only dull-eyed thanks you turned away in confusion.

  You lived, Feliks. You grew and battled and came to Palestine and knew women, yet you remained a coward. After the war when your newspaper advertisement led me to you, you were grown and severe, a hero of Resistance. Yet you were afraid to ask. You cared only for your Lilka, and when I told you again and again the story of her last days in camp, it was enough for you. You did not ask me about Halina, Feliks. You could not bear to remember her again, only to lose her. So you with your fragile paper-thin love chose to forget.

  It was she who jumped into the fire when the Americans were coming, Feliks. It was Halina. Her body was hollowed, already burning with fever, so many days she would not lift her head when I called her Halina. She did not care for me any longer. And when the German guards stood opposite their burning building, when the German guards stood with fear in their eyes
and surveyed the burning of their burning deeds, she did not hesitate. She did not speak a word, did not look at me. She crouched, she stood, she ran with bone-cracking strength into the roaring wind of the flames. Halina who knew always what she wanted in this world, she did not look to the left or the right, but ran on stilts of legs as if toward her greatest dream.

  Halina, I would never leave you, even if my own fate hung in the balance. I rose and ran after you, I would dance with you in those flames and we would be together. But before I could embrace you the stranger’s bony arm wrapped my chest and held. “Americans,” the woman hissed. Her eyes, sunken, flashed furious strength. “Americans are coming. Believe in Americans.”

  How smoke billowed to the sky, while my sister danced in those flames.

  The Americans came, Halina. Before the ashes were settled, before the last of the smoke had flown, the Americans came for us. Broad-faced soldiers, pouring water from metal jugs into tin cups. Water, splashing everywhere, ribbons of shining water wasted into the ground. Water, they called. We have water. We have soup, come and drink.

  Mouths open in thanksgiving or weeping. Cages of bones stumbled and clung to American elbows, uniforms, pant legs. Americans collapsed in corners, staggered vomiting from the smell. Flashbulbs, in the shaky hands of journalists, pinned us to this place. We will make you well. Only an American could promise it.

  In this dimming apartment I rise to my feet. In the cupboard I know I will find what I need; I take the dusty glass from the shelf. A memorial candle, given me by the blacks one Atonement Day. To keep the departed alive in your mind in this holy season, they said. So you should not forget them in the hour of judgment. What need had I, then, for their candle?

  Now I take it from the cupboard and set it on the windowsill. A soft striking of this match, the reflection flares on the metal shutter. My hands tremble but the flame glows steady.

  O American. I am lonely for Your eyes.

  Together we might have found future. But You did not fulfill Your word. You, American. You, false messiah. Parading Yourself as salvation when all can see Your bruises. You refused to understand what I asked.

  And did You imagine I did not know from the start that he beat You? Did You think I did not see bruises under face powder, hear cries at night, feel in my own body how You favored one leg as You walked? Did You think I did not lie awake listening, and understand every bit of suffering You hid from the bustling world?

  I am not dull-witted.

  The blacks in camp prayed ceaselessly to the east, American, and I prayed to the west. To comic books cornfields GI Garbo You.

  See how memory burns. See, this steady flame rising in my windowsill.

  Outside, the blacks release the last of their evening prayers. Outside, winding sun-beaten streets of Jerusalem pause before drawing breath. Daylight sinks, this city trembles expectation.

  Pain grips my head, a vise of Your abandonment.

  Halina. You were beautiful, your fair hair shone. When we were girls and you had the scarlet fever, you lay in our bedroom remote from me in dreams. I wished upon myself death if only the illness would spare you. You never knew. You tossed and writhed with the fever, your pillow damp with sweat. I pledged, I would sit beside you and, tell you stories of things you had done and might do, stories of yourself to call you back to this world. All day I knelt beside your bed. Mother could not keep me from you, she would take me to the parlor couch at night and I would appear again beside you, no gate or barricade could stop me. Tale upon tale, my voice chanted to your sleeping ears. On the third morning I touched your forehead and the fever was gone. You cracked your dry lips and smiled, an innocent smile that said you were well rested from your long journey far from home. You opened your eyes, and healed me.

  Wrenching metal from its cradle of stone, I throw open these shutters. Outside, the maddened sun, weary of its own burning, tumbles. Sunset spreads over this gold and copper city, transforms each antenna and glinting rooftop tank to another shining flame. I listen until the cry of the rug peddler winds into the call of the muezzin, men sing fl prayer in this kindling city.

  And how this candle flares, the cloth curtain above hangs blessedly near.

  O American, spread upon us the tabernacle of Your peace.

  A ray of sun stretches to touch this window, soft wind billows the cur tain. I chant encouragement. Sunset blurs my vision but still I see the candle dance in greeting.

  With a small sigh of air, the curtain lights.

  Fire. Yes, Halina, at last it is on fire.

  Through this flame-lit pane I see our city. I see the blacks moving beneath their signs, I see the rug peddler disappear around the corner. Figures hoping hammering toiling for redemption, framed in fire. Words lost beneath the hissing crackling sound of these curtains.

  O American.

  Fire, climbing. Fire stretching before me at last. Halina, you were right. They cannot save us, there will be no future. Fire, and wind. Fire, and smoke, and such terrible pain in my chest. Smoke obscures the city now, Halina your cries rise in plumes. Karol is gone, no one will ever believe I was so loved. For he could not bear that I should strain to reach him, so he bent his towering frame and kissed me. These shards, fragments, cannot be made whole. Lilka weeps, her hat and dress soiled with ghetto mud. O Americans, bend the sky and come. But Halina, you understood what I could not see. There would be no salvation.

  The American is lost, Halina. The American has honey-blond hair and eyes filled with confusion. She steps fearful among those She admires and cannot seek Her own salvation. Her boyfriend dons his rage and She has fallen, silenced.

  Pain, blotting out thought. Pain come at last, I am bent to the floor, twisting I search for the chute of sky above but all I see is smoke.

  From the depths I cry to You, American. Who will put out this fire?

  Once when I was a young woman I gave a party in the middle of a hailstorm.

  Halina, all the guests came.

  And now I hear it, through the crackling of the fire: the sound of the palm tree’s gentle rain.

  Water.

  Water rushing over me, water soothing, water whispering its lullaby. Water at last, come to ease this burning. At last this fire in my brain will be quenched. I have waited so long for release, now I am stunned by its sudden beauty. I fall to my knees, there is no more strength in my two hands. O Lilka O Karol O my beloved Halina, now at last the past will die with me and we will be set free. Redemption has come after all, for look, the pain is gone. My mind, after days upon nights, my mind no longer burns. How gentle, this soft breeze. I have no Strength to lift this weary head and so I cradle it in my own arms. I have stayed faithful to you, my sister, I have guardedyour memory these endless years. I did not forsake you. Now stay with me in this blessed hush and do not leave me, ever.

  15

  Morning. Brightness seeps through the pores of cloth over my face. I push the flap of the sleeping bag aside.

  Although it can’t be long since dawn, the campgrounds are bleached with daylight. High above, the sky’s blue is thin and hard; a person could scrape it with a fingernail and leave a streak of dusty white.

  Gil’s sleeping bag lies empty beside mine. I see him across the pool, apart from the others. He is gathering food from a picnic table.

  I stand. Immediately the fight bounds through my head, I raise both hands to my temples and press. But it brings no relief. My jaw feels swollen. My legs are tattooed with scratches, and threaten to buckle under me.

  “My God, what happened?”

  Here beside me, so quiet I didn’t detect her presence until she spoke, Rina stares with undisguised horror.

  I lower my hands. I press my lips together against the pain and stare back. If I don’t answer, I’m convinced, I will become invisible to her. She will forget about me and leave.

  She doesn’t move.

  A faint hope rises in my chest. I try to quell it.

  My cousin’s girlfriend gestures mutely at
my face and waits for an explanation.

  I won’t give it to her. She knows the answer, why does she need me to say it?

  “Maya,” she urges.

  “Help me,” I say.

  “Oh God, you poor thing.” She steps forward but stops a few paces away. “How could he do this to you? How badly are you hurt?”

  I see she’s afraid to touch me. I see I’m incomprehensible to her; I’m pathetic.

  It takes only a second for my shame to turn to hatred. At least Gil doesn’t look at me with that insulting pity, erasing anything about me that’s worthwhile. Gil knows who I am, he knows exactly how weak and uncertain, and he wants to be with me all the same. To him, I’m more than just an American girl. To him I’m special.

  A deep breath, then Rina formulates her plan. “I’ll get the others to keep him away from you. Dov can handle him, and Yair will help. We’ll drive him to Eilat and put him on a bus for Jerusalem. Then, when we go back to Jerusalem, we can all help get you out of the apartment.”

  I let her finish. Then I shake my head. I touch my cheek. “Help me.”

  She stands perfectly still, uncomprehending. Then disgust floods her face. “I don’t have any makeup,” she tells me coldly.

  I turn away, uninterested. I have no use for her, this girlfriend of my cousin’s. I wait for her to go away.

  How long she stands there.

  At last I hear her leave. But before I’ve had the chance to search my own backpack for cover-up, she returns with a wet washcloth dripping a chain of dark spots on the packed earth. Her motions are angry, she barely pauses when I wince. When she has finished, she gives me a towel and I dry my face without a word. With an angry turn of her wrist she opens a jar of tinted face cream; she found it in one of the other girls’ packs, she mutters. The cream is cool on my skin and her finger is not gentle. Only when she’s finished does she look into my eyes. She bites her lip. Compassion and hostility clash in her eyes. When she speaks, each word is clipped. “I’m going to talk to Dov,” is all she says. Then she’s gone.