Gone to Soldiers: A Novel

by Marge Piercy

  Trudi regularly withdrew books from the library with house plans and sketches to pore over, constantly altering the ideal house she was building in her head. Naomi loved playing that game with Trudi. The house was as important to her as it was to Trudi, but not as a real house in the future. It was an absorbing game that kept bad dreams away. Ruthie was not interested in houses and tended to make practical objections, raising issues of cost and financing, which made her a killjoy. Trudi’s mother saw no reason why Leib and Trudi should not continue living in Trudi’s old room after the war. Only Naomi wanted to play house plans with Trudi. Often she forgot that Trudi was years older than her and a mother besides.

  Sandy talked about clothes the way Trudi talked about houses. Sandy could draw pretty girls comic book style, like the paper dolls they had both played with till recently, putting on and taking off elaborate costumes. Sandy still had a Deanna Durbin paper doll. Now Sandy preferred to draw two cartoon ladies, one labeled Sandy with blond hair and one labeled Naomi with curly brown hair, and dress them in imagined outfits. She drew Naomi to resemble Ritzi in the Sunday papers.

  Naomi found clothes less interesting than houses, but she did not allow Sandy to know that. She did not imagine putting on and taking off elaborate garments when she was trying to stave off those bad dreams of the bleak nasty place far away, as she sometimes imagined herself moving through one of Trudi’s elegant and comfortable houses. Houses felt more protective than fancy dresses. If she was always having to pretend to be interested in things she was not, and keeping to herself things she wanted to say, it was because she was in someone else’s country and someone else’s house.

  Sandy still shared her daydreams about boys with Naomi, who could tell that Sandy had none of the murky feelings she suffered, the fear, the dark fascination of Leib, the fevered imaginings. It occurred to Naomi that unlike Ruthie she was probably going to be a bad woman. Perhaps she would be a jewel thief or a bank robber. She would die in a swarm of police bullets, like Alan Ladd in This Gun for Hire.

  One Wednesday when she got home from high school, early because the overcrowded school was in double sessions and she was home by one-thirty, Aunt Rose met her at the door waving a thin blue letter. “It’s from your sister, I think, but she wrote it in French.”

  Naomi experienced a moment of fury at her aunt for having opened her letter. How could Aunt Rose do that to her, open the only letter she had received since the day after Pearl Harbor from anyone in her family! She looked swiftly at the end, but she could tell from the handwriting that it was from Jacqueline, not from Maman or Rivka.

  At first she could not read the letter, could not read the French, and she felt a sharp panic. She was no longer French. Soon she would no longer speak or read French, and she would belong noplace and to nobody, ever. She ran to her room and slammed the door, leaving Rose and Sharon staring after her. She turned and opened the door a second time and slammed it again, so they would know she meant it.

  Ma chère petite soeur Naomi, the letter began, which was a surprise in itself, as Jacqueline had always, always insisted on using their French and not their Jewish names. The handwriting was extremely tiny, as if Jacqueline, who had always had a delicate handwriting, now could inscribe letters on the head of a pin. Jacqueline said she thought of her sister often and missed her and wondered how she was doing far away in America where none of them had ever gone before. They were all so scattered, their whole family, sometimes she felt frightened that they would never be together again. She did not think she had been much good before at being a big sister, but she loved Naomi dearly and missed her constantly and wanted to do better if she were ever given the chance. Maman and Rivka had been captured and deported to the east. Papa was a hero, and she, Jacqueline, was not doing a bad job either. She could not write more, but Naomi could know that they loved her. She had not seen Papa, but she had had news of him very recently. She had hoped to see him long before this, but she supposed it was perhaps too dangerous for him.

  Dangerous? Naomi flattened the tissue paper letter on the bed and tried to understand these phrases. Papa a hero. Jacqueline not doing a bad job either. Too dangerous. Maman and Rivka deported. She realized she was thinking in French again. Deported meant that her bad dreams were true. She felt a rush of bad smells and loud noises, the constant fear and hunger, the cold that gnawed the bones covered by scabby skin. The place she saw did not come from her subconscious, as Ruthie said about bad dreams, but was a place that existed there in the east, where the black smoke rose as if from a volcano and hung greasy and potent in the air.

  The letter continued, I am in the south but not the south you and Rivka used to love so much. I hope that your aunt and uncle and their family are good to you. At least you will continue, whatever happens, and you will carry on our family and remember all of us. I love you and I mean to bring you home as soon as France is free again. Many Jewish children here have to be hidden in Christian homes to save their lives. They too cannot see their families, even though they are still in France.

  My dear, if you feel lonely there, you must tell yourself that even if Papa had not been smart enough to send you to safety, we could not be together here. You would have to be sent to Switzerland or Spain or hidden in France, with a Christian family probably, and you would have to act Christian to survive, go to Mass, say their prayers, pretend constantly. Where you are, you are free to be a Jew and you should be proud. Know you are loved and that if we all survive, we will be together. Someday soon the war will be won and our people will come from the shadows. Someone will mail this from a safe place. Je t’embrasse bien fort, ta soeur Jacqueline.

  She read the letter and read it again and read it again and again. She understood some of it, and some sounded strange. She had trouble believing her irritable snotty sister had written to her like that, so loving and saying she was free to be a Jew and should be proud. She wondered briefly if Jacqueline had really written it. Perhaps Jacqueline too had bad dreams and saw the place where the dead walked, the skeletons in striped rags with the eyes as big as moons and the bones all knobbly.

  Then she lay down on the bed and cried into her pillow until she could no longer breathe through her nose and until her eyes were raw with salt, the lids swollen, clutching Boston Blackie like a pillow. Then she sat up and read the letter again, pausing over every sentence to try to understand. What was the danger? That both Papa and Jacqueline would be caught and sent to the place of cold and pain and unending hunger and fear?

  Almost she wished the letter had not come. The letter said she was not sent away because she was unloved, she was not sent into exile, but saved. That she was special. That she alone was protected. Perhaps she did not feel that way because she was bad.

  What she understood was that they were all separated, not only her, and that they might never come together again. Maman and Rivka must be sent as far to the east as she was sent to the west. In the middle somewhere were Jacqueline and Papa, but even they were separated, unable to find each other. Her loneliness was not unique but shared among her family. Only Rivka and Maman were together, in the place of death.

  She stayed in her room until Aunt Rose came to knock on her door, quite politely, and ask her to come to supper. She started to follow her aunt, then turned and, folding the letter carefully, tucked it into the pocket of her corduroy skirt. As she sat down at the table, it made a little noise, as if it whispered to her.

  Everyone was waiting to hear what the letter said. They ate quickly, and then Uncle Morris and Aunt Rose sat there, elbows on the table and hands cradled over their coffee cups, waiting. Reluctantly Naomi brought out the letter and smoothed it on the table. She was passionately glad it was in French, so that no one but she could read it word by word. She would simply tell them some of what it said and keep the rest to herself.

  “My sister Jacqueline says that she is in the south of France but not in the part of Provence where we used to go for vacations. She doesn’t say where she is. She
says that my mother and Rivka have been deported.”

  Aunt Rose cried out sharply and Uncle Morris groaned. Then he said, “But we really don’t know conditions in all the camps, if they’re similar, what’s going on. It’s all rumors and counterrumors.” He looked grim.

  Naomi said nothing. She knew the conditions from her dreams.

  Morris raised his head. “Well, does she say how she has managed not to be deported yet? Is she hiding?”

  “She doesn’t say. She says that Papa is a hero and he is in danger. She says that she is not doing a bad job either. I don’t know what she means.”

  “Let me see the letter.”

  Slowly Naomi unclenched her hand and let Morris take the thin sheet.

  “Ach. It’s French. I forgot.” He handed it back. “Translate for me, exactly.”

  Reluctantly Naomi did, taking the letter back and smoothing it over and over, to erase the touch of anyone else.

  Morris rubbed his bald spot. “It has to be the Resistance she’s talking about. They must both be underground. That’s how she could get the letter out. It was mailed in London, but obviously she’s still in France. She’s in touch with some network outside of France.”

  “Poor girl,” Aunt Rose murmured, “separated from her family and alone, in danger. What will become of her? Her father has a duty to find her.”

  Morris shrugged. “In wartime, the primary duty is to fight.”

  “Nu, so you’d go and leave us to fend for ourselves, in trouble?”

  “I’m an old man. Nobody’s handing me a gun and saying, Kill Nazis. But there is something we can do.”

  “We can take care of their daughter,” Aunt Rose said, “the way we’re doing.”

  “The Joint is raising money. They take it as a loan. You give them money now, and after the war, they give it back. Why not? We can’t buy anything with our savings. Maybe the money will find its way to help.”

  “Morris, are we Rothschilds to be giving money away? Are we so rich?”

  “For the first time in our lives, we’re doing okay. What’s the use handing it over to the banks? Jews give to everybody’s charities. I see you give silver to the nuns when they come around. Who gives to the Joint but Jews? And now, it’s more important than ever.” When he said that, he glanced toward Naomi, and Aunt Rose gave him a quick frown of warning. Something he wasn’t to say.

  Naomi was thinking about killing Nazis with a gun. That’s what Morris meant that Papa did, and that was why he was in danger. Uncle Morris knew that was what the letter meant. She remembered Papa in his uniform going off to the army, looking handsome and serious. He could protect himself. He would survive. He would come and find Naomi, just as she had dreamed at first, riding his motorbike but in uniform. Even if she was not a good girl, he would not mind, but be glad anyhow because he had been shooting and killing and would not be so fussy about what she had been doing.

  Maybe they would stay in Detroit, and Ruthie would live with them. Maybe they would go to Paris. Jacqueline would apologize for calling her Nadine all those years. Then there would be a loud ringing at the door, and Maman and Rivka, thin and pale, would stand there and Maman would say, I forgot my keys but here I am home and hungry.

  Several times in the next few days she caught her aunt and uncle talking about the camps. When she entered the room, they changed the subject right away, so she took to being very quiet and waiting outside. Uncle Morris said that she would find out anyhow, because he was always bringing home pamphlets and Jewish newspapers. Aunt Rose said that most of the newspapers were in Yiddish. Uncle Morris said there was plenty in English around the house by now. That made Naomi smile, although the smile hurt as if her face were tearing, because both Rivka and she could read a little Yiddish. Papa had taught them the Hebrew alphabet years ago, and Maman used to get a Yiddish weekly. She could make out what the papers said, the gist of it, and sometimes there were photographs that had been smuggled out of German-occupied countries, of bodies machine-gunned in a ditch or Jews being pushed into freight cars. She was at once angry with her uncle and her aunt for thinking she did not know as much as they did about the camps, and grateful, for unlike G-d, at least they tried to keep the pain from her. At least they tried.

  RUTHIE 6

  What Is Given and What Is Taken Away

  It was a fall of crisp nearly clear days and days of scudding granite grey clouds. The first frost had just ended the tomato canning when Arty was drafted. It happened almost too fast for them to register what was happening. Then the Army had taken him and he was gone, looking as ill at ease in his uniform as Murray had a year and a half before.

  Ruthie had always had a sparring relationship with Duvey and a more workable one with Arty. Arty had been the good boy, not ambitious, not overly bright but diligent. He had married so young she could scarcely remember his days of dating. He seemed to have gone directly from boyish pastimes of baseball and street hockey to a man’s responsibilities of marriage and family, while Duvey had remained the perennial adolescent. Arty never left home, only moving upstairs, and scarcely a day had passed in her life without seeing him.

  Sharon lay in bed the day after he left and would not get up, although her own children were crying and Rose was distraught and overwhelmed. When Ruthie got home from the factory at eleven-thirty, Rose was waiting up to complain about Sharon.

  Ruthie privately thought they should let Sharon collapse for a few days after which she would surely get up on her own. The volume of work, however, was more than Rose could handle. More importantly, she was furious with Sharon for taking to her bed over Arty’s being drafted, when Rose had not left Sharon to manage alone when Duvey had been killed. Morris refused to get involved, insisting it was a matter for the women to settle. Rose said she couldn’t manage one more day, and if Sharon didn’t get up tomorrow, she would have to keep Naomi home from school to help her.

  “But, Mama, I can’t march upstairs now and talk to her. It’s midnight.”

  “She’s not sleeping. Besides, who needs to sleep twenty-four hours a day? That’s not a woman, that’s a piece of furniture, a chair, a stuffed owl. Who needs a stuffed owl for a daughter-in-law? Oy, oy, my man is gone, so I’m going to bed like a princess?” Rose grabbed her by the elbow and took her into the bedroom where Morris softly snored. “Listen,” she whispered, poking Ruthie in the ribs.

  Through the ceiling came the sound of a radio. Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.” Sharon wanted to deny reality. Ruthie could understand. She could imagine, as she climbed the steps reluctantly, pausing on the landing to make sour faces, that it would be heaven itself to go to bed and sleep for a week, a month, to snooze the war away. Maybe instead of routing Sharon out as she had been instructed, she would climb in beside her and give up at last: relinquish her ambitions, her hopes, her insane and exhausting schedule attending school, starting early for one full workday, and then going to the factory and working another full shift.

  Still she could not let Rose keep Naomi out of school. Naomi was doing all right, but the language barrier remained. She might never be the student in English she could be in French. Naomi needed more schooling, not less. Ruthie could not let her be sacrificed to Sharon’s indulgent grief.

  Long ago Morris had put a stout lock on the outer door, so that the upstairs and downstairs apartments need not be locked from the stairwell. She followed the sound of Jimmy Dorsey’s band to the master bedroom over her parents. Sharon was propped up in bed with her high school yearbooks, wedding photographs, summer snapshots and dance programs spread around her. Her face was red and swollen as if she had toothache. Wadded up handkerchiefs had been tossed into corners. “This is your make-believe ballroom bringing you cheek to cheek music to dance to, to dream by, to bring back stardust memories.…”

  “Sharon!” Ruthie cleared her throat, sitting on the bench of Sharon’s vanity. “Mama’s very upset. She can’t handle the nursery without you. It’s too much work for her.”

  “How co
uld they take him? A father doing essential war work? It’s not right. It’s not fair. There’s thousands of useless no-good men they could have taken. I could send them a list of twenty right in this neighborhood nobody would miss and a lot of women would thank them from the bottoms of their hearts.”

  I’m too weary for this, Ruthie thought, words have left me. What went through her mind sitting there was that Sharon had a lot of room to herself and that it would be nice to have a vanity, if she ever got dressed up again. “Sharon, I can tell you from my own experience, it’s better to keep busy, or you just can’t stand it.”

  “You’re talking about some boyfriend. Maybe you’ll marry him and maybe you won’t. It’s not the same thing, not one tenth the same thing!” Sharon sat up, clutching their formal wedding picture in its leather frame to her breasts.

  “Think of Trudi, who had Leib go away two days after they were married, and he’s not even home to see his baby. Come on. You helped get Mama into this. And you’re going to need the money.”

  Sharon put down the photo. “The Army pays less a month than he was making every week! What am I going to do? How can I live on an allotment?”

  “You won’t make it at all if you don’t get out of bed and help Mama. I’m telling you, she can’t manage. She’ll have to find another woman from the neighborhood to work with her and split the money. She’ll have to find someone right away.”

  Sharon snapped off the radio. She pulled her mouth out thin. “All right. I hear you. But it isn’t fair!”