by Herz Bergner
He kissed the mezuzah above the door and went ahead. Reluctantly the children followed him. It was a beautiful late-summer morning and the streets were lying shrunken and still, as if cowering in fear, waiting for another fiery deluge to descend from the sky.
Echoes of the deafening thunder which had shaken the world were still present and the streets trembled and breathed heavily as after an earthquake. Whole rows of houses lay in disorder, crumbled and sunk into the earth. Ruins crouched against each other and vast yawning holes stared vacantly and sadly from them. The walls were peeled and blistered like the faces of survivors of a terrible fire. Naked bricks bled from the peeled plaster and brick dust filled the air. Fiery tongues greedily licked the sky and tore pieces from it, covering the town in soot and smoke. Iron street lamps, as if in great pain, lay twisted like corkscrews. Tram tracks torn from the earth were bent and useless, and trams lay upside down like beetles with their bellies showing.
From ruins that were still collapsing the dead were being removed, covered with blood-stained clothes and sheets. The shrill cries of children and the shrieks of adults bemoaning the dead filled the air. A horse that had been unable to find shelter sprawled dead in the middle of the street, entangled in a shattered cart and partly buried under rubble. The front wall of a house had collapsed so that a room stood exposed to the street as if in a display window. Two beds were revealed, with big headpieces, and pictures of an old father and mother hung on the patterned, rose-coloured wall. The childish faces of naked angels clutching lutes in their chubby hands looked down from the ceiling where they floated amongst the plaster clouds. The brass pendulum of a grandfather clock continued to tick off the hours as if nothing had happened.
That was how Warsaw looked when Nathan left it. Several times he tried to take the heavy bag from his father-in-law, but Jacob wouldn’t give it up, saying that they had a long way to go and that there would be plenty of time for Nathan to carry it. So Nathan carried the rucksack on his shoulder and Faigele carried their child and Ida’s, whose squabbling caused anguish to both mothers. Ida and Hershl carried the linen bundles between them.
Outside the city the family caught up with long columns of people, in wagons and on foot, who had fled Warsaw. They fell in with old-fashioned wagons, peasant carts and motor vehicles that were stalled by the dense crowds. Under their feet lay scattered bags and items of clothing that had been thrown away by people unable any longer to carry their loads. And all the time military trucks filled with soldiers tooted and cut their way through a mass of humanity that parted like open scissors. The trucks were hurrying to and from Warsaw, and when they had passed, the mass huddled together again in a tight knot. The column of refugees swelled as peasants with their cows and calves joined in. Then later it thinned again as many dropped out and were left behind.
The country road ahead gleamed in the sun. Somewhere in a barn a cock crowed, its noisy call fading to a sleepy cry. After the heavy thunder of guns and the long-drawn scream of screeching shells it seemed that the rooster’s call came from a far-off, peaceful world that had ceased to be a long, long time ago. A soft haze shimmered in the summer air, caressing their faces like spider webs. The naked fields lay in vast coloured patches and trees had begun to shed leaves that burnt with the scarlet of sunsets. The golden autumn was coming; who knew whether Nathan would ever see it again?
They had gone a long way when Jacob stopped. He pushed back his hat, wiped the sweat from his brow and declared that it was time for him to go home.
‘Mother won’t know what to think!’ he said.
He parted from his children calmly, asking only that his grandchildren grasp his long thick beard, which in his old age had begun to show a few grey threads. He was still the same as he had always been; he never for a moment lost his self possession. He handed the heavy bag to Nathan and said, ‘Now! Be well, children. May the Almighty God be with you.’
And so he went away. His children watched him and saw his old broad shoulders swaying with strength and refusing to bend. He walked alone back to the city, pressing against the forward moving mass of people with their pitiful bundles. He never once looked back, but became smaller and smaller until he finally disappeared.
For three days and nights the column crawled on. The family walked—occasionally they hitched a ride on a wagon—until they arrived one evening at the tiny out-of-the-way village where the calamity occurred.
There was little evidence in the village that war raged in the world. As if nothing had happened, the small dingy shops were still open, the peasants were selling potatoes and onions, and craftsmen were still at work. The refugees were received with bread and hot soup and little pots of coffee and milk to revive their flagging spirits. The Jews of the village were mostly artisans and market vendors with healthy sunburnt faces and necks. They said that, thanks to God, the war had not touched them. And even if the conflict came to them they would not flee.
Meanwhile the Jews took the new arrivals to the synagogue and made beds for them in their houses, saying that they must first rest their bones and tomorrow, if God willed, they would see what else could be done.
No sooner had these words been uttered than hell swept into the village and all that had been full of life was ablaze. And in the inferno Faigele and the children, together with Hershl, were lost.
Just before the German aeroplanes had come over the village like a plague of hungry locusts, leaving only desolation and death, Faigele left the synagogue to put the children to bed. Hershl went with her to help carry the bundles. They were going to the home of Reb Yidel, the fisherman and president of the synagogue. He was a big open-hearted man with a long, thick beard and big swollen side-curls, and around him clung the smell of the nets. He had a booming voice to match his big body and he threw open his home to everybody.
‘Come to my place and have something to eat,’ he shouted from the door of the synagogue. ‘My wife has prepared the beds. It’s your home, friends! Come in and put your children to sleep.’ He himself helped the women carry their children to his house.
When the aeroplanes disappeared it became silent, and Nathan rose as if from a terrible nightmare. He was still holding the heavy bag tightly against his body as if it were the dearest thing in the world. It seemed to him that he was clutching his wife and child to protect them against all evils.
He pushed the bag from him and ran to find his family. But he found only Ida, his sister-in-law, who was searching for her child and husband. She wandered amongst the burning ruins, where fire leapt from one wooden cottage to another, devouring everything so quickly that it seemed it had come to the village just for a little while and was in a hurry to do the same terrible work somewhere else. All the houses were soon in the midst of the inferno, and they stood patiently like sacrificial heifers paying penance for some terrible sin. The naked rafters and uprights of the burning houses stood exposed like bones and ribs. Each house lit the night until it collapsed as if made of cardboard.
Ida still searched for her child and her husband, and now she was just like her mother. There was the same frightened face, the same movements and the same hoarse, high-pitched voice with the sob in it. The old Ida with the light brown hair and the amber eyes, which sometimes screwed up in malice, had disappeared, and she was half her size, shrunken into the little body of her mother.
‘Where is my Sarah?’ She screamed and called to her child as she tore her hair and pinched her cheeks. ‘Where has my only child gone? Hershl! H-er-shl! Why have you left me alone?’
But nobody answered. There was only the crackling of fire, the sound of cannonfire, which came ever closer, and cries and shrieks that rose to heaven. People searched for each other amid the devastation, distraught and screaming, and they urged each other to leave the town because the German hordes were coming nearer.
Ida’s cries cast a pall of horror over Nathan, deadening his own pain. He didn’t know what to do. He dared not approach to reassure her that her husband and chi
ld might still be found hiding somewhere about. So Ida stumbled alone amongst a double row of burnt and naked chimneys, silvered by the shining moon, which lined the only street of the village. In place of the small cottages, they stood like rows of tombstones.
If not for Reb Yidel, who was scrambling amongst the ruins with the rescued Sefah Torah in his hands, Ida would never have left without Sarah and Hershl. He ordered the people to leave the town and hide in the woods. The fisherman suddenly appeared before Ida, stormed and shouted at her and commanded her to leave immediately with him. She was overawed by his imposing appearance and his thick untidy beard, which now looked broader and more disorderly and shook fiercely. She was frightened of his anger; his changed voice rang out with such authority that she went with him.
Without any will of her own she joined the people, who carried her along into the night, who jostled and pushed her far, far away from her husband and her child—over foreign countries and seas. There was no way back ever.
But Nathan was always by her side, never letting her out of his sight. Of Faigele and Hershl and of the children no news ever came, although Nathan and Ida always asked after them. They searched for them amongst the people on the road; they asked everyone, describing them fully. But no one knew of them, nobody had seen them.
CHAPTER III
The ship ploughed on and still no land was seen. Every night Ida and Nathan saw the moon pour its silvery coins wide over the surface of the water before they disappeared into the fathomless depths of the sea. When a storm came they didn’t go to their cabins as the others did, but watched the sea changing and swelling. It took on an iron-grey visage and shrank and towered to leap upon the ship, driving her to one side as if to turn her over. And as often as the sea changed, so did Ida. Sometimes she was in a good mood, her face untroubled, and around her full, wind-cracked lips played the mischievous smile that Nathan had not seen for so long. She was full of charm and wrinkled her wide, snub nose and screwed up her eyes until only two smiling, amber slits could be seen. Her face was smooth and browned by the sun and wind so that it glowed like golden honey. Then she would behave exactly as she had when she was a school girl. She talked to Nathan with a childish drawl and gave herself airs, forgetting everybody and everything.
But this wouldn’t last long. It was enough for Ida to see Mrs Hudess’s two little girls carrying their doll around the ship for her to burst out crying. She found in them many similarities to her little Sarah. Then she drove Nathan away and made him the scapegoat for the bitterness in her heart, as if he was responsible for everything. She didn’t want to see him again, torturing him and herself because they had run away from the village. They should have remained there and not been afraid of the Germans! Why had she become so frightened of that fisherman? Who gave him the right to shout and order her about! And why had she obeyed him like a small child? Why was she so afraid for her own skin?
Ida became frantic; her tall, full figure quivered and she threw all the blame on Nathan, demanding he tell her why he had run away. He was a man; why was he so frightened? A fine man indeed, who was so afraid for his own life! Perhaps he was sick of his own wife and child.
Having spoken these words, she seemed afraid of them and stopped, completely bewildered. But soon she became accustomed to them and she began to hurl them with more malice until she was satiated and only then did she become silent. The worst she could say she said, and she enjoyed insulting him ever more grievously. Nathan then saw the Ida of old, after her father had forced her to do what he had wanted. In order to stifle her own misery and above all to conceal her love for Nathan, she had stopped at nothing. Everything seemed right to her and she constantly tortured herself and him.
Everywhere they went, through foreign countries and cities, Nathan had put up with the same thing, and it was hell for him. On top of his suffering and his constant yearning for his wife and son he had to listen to Ida’s accusations. In torturing herself she seemed to find pleasure and relief and it was difficult for him to quieten her. She would cry for hours, lacerating her wounds, and he was helpless. He caressed and embraced her, and he felt her hot tears on his flesh. Then she became so yielding in his hands, so intimately soft, that a warm glow spread through every fibre of his body and in a second he could forget himself so completely that he could have embraced her passionately. Still she would not be calm and again she hurled those venomous and hurtful words which poured so easily from her tongue.
That the ship plodded on and on without an end seemed of no concern to them. They felt no hunger and they didn’t notice that the portions of stew were getting scantier and they were no longer provided with even mouldy fish. Nathan didn’t notice that his tall, spare body was getting thinner and his soft, grey eyes and his nose were getting bigger, his nose sticking out hungrily from his hollow, unshaven cheeks. Neither of them noticed how Fabyash ran frantically around the deck shouting that he knew for certain that the ship was turning back. ‘The sun is rising in a different position now and that is proof that the ship has changed its course,’ he demonstrated to the other passengers. The captain, that enemy of Israel, must be a German. We’ve seen things like this before. We should get together and give him a bribe. He’s just the man to take a bribe.
But they wouldn’t listen. They didn’t want to believe him and they waved him away.
‘God knows what he is talking about, the mad babbler!’ said Zainval Rockman, shrugging his shoulders. Rockman had never had any opinion of Fabyash’s knowledge and theories for he was a man who kept his pride and remembered his position. He wouldn’t stop to talk to just anybody.
‘A man gets an obsession and then he walks around like a bogeyman frightening children. I wouldn’t give a farthing for his talk. Bah! What does he know?’
But the passengers would creep out on to the deck to convince themselves, with their own eyes, that Fabyash was right and the sun really rose from a different direction, although they still shouted him down and would not let him open his mouth. Mrs Hudess, who was afraid of nobody and spoke her mind to everyone, went for him and would give him no peace. She called her two little daughters to her, stroked their heads and held them in her thin, shrunken arms which yet retained their motherly comfort and warmth. And in her gentle drawl that could move a stone, she said to Fabyash, ‘What have you against these two poor orphans, I ask you?’
Pointing to her little daughters, she went on, ‘Why do you wish them harm? They still have a big world before them. Ghoul that you are, you haven’t a human heart within you!’
Fabyash shot a despairing glance at the girls. He couldn’t make out what Mrs Hudess wanted of him and he quickly got away from her. But still the people gave him no rest and he couldn’t get away from them anywhere. From day to day he seemed to get smaller and smaller. His movements became more convulsive and his dark eyes darted anxiously to and fro like frightened mice in a cage. He rushed from one end of the ship to the other and could find no rest. He was so afraid that he hid from the lifeboat drill. Nor could he imagine how Reb Lazar could have such fortitude, such a delicate and refined man too! He walked about as if nothing was happening, studied the sacred books, recited psalms and admonished the others to have faith and place their trust in God. His only sorrow was that he might not be buried in sanctified soil.
Fabyash avoided him and wouldn’t even look in his direction. He also avoided the distinguished Warsaw doctor who followed him everywhere and gave him no peace. The foolish, gentle smile on the doctor’s unshaven, neglected face was always before his eyes and it seemed to Fabyash like the peaceful, innocent smile on the face of a corpse that has long left the land of the living.
But the doctor didn’t see that Fabyash was avoiding him. Lately he had become cheerful and he wanted to talk to Fabyash. He talked constantly of his son whom the Germans had hanged before his eyes and of eminent doctors who had been his comrades, just as if they were all alive and on board the boat with him. He wandered about amongst the women and liste
ned to them talking of their illnesses. He spoke in an elegant and measured Polish with many Latin words and phrases, as if he were reciting from memory, and the women didn’t understand one word. He also used a few Yiddish words, which he pronounced like a proselyte, to show that after all he was a staunch Jew. He liked to explain to the women the causes of their illnesses and to analyse everything carefully. He became so absorbed in his talk that he didn’t notice that everyone was edging away from him. When some of the women put a few coins into his hands he pushed the money away with an aristocratic air of disdain.
‘Money—dirt,’ he said in Yiddish, laughing himself at his pronunciation of the words.
Every day he neglected himself more. He didn’t wash and he didn’t comb his long, silvery hair. When his little, thin wife pursued him with a wet towel, like a mother chasing an overgrown child, he pleaded with her: ‘Let me be, my dear. Can’t you see that I am busy? I have just washed. Believe me, dear, believe me I have.’
Then he pulled down over his eyes his black, broad-brimmed artist’s hat which, as if in spite, was brand new. He loved to wear it. With quick, impatient steps he hurried away as though in haste to attend a patient.
In the big, dirty dining room there were a few wooden tables scattered with faded domino sets and chess boards. Here Nathan frequently met the doctor. Although there was now very little on the plates that were served here, the room was always noisy and full of people. Everyone turned anxiously to look towards the fat, olive-faced cook, with the dirty, white cap on his head every time he showed himself at the window. It was hard to find anywhere to sit. Ida and Nathan sat together with an old, partly deaf Greek and his big, timid wife and read all the names and dates scratched on the table. When Nathan found a Jewish name amongst them it seemed warmly intimate to him as though he had met an old acquaintance who spoke to him in his own language.
The Greek interpreted for Nathan the many notices and announcements on the ship. But Nathan understood him only with great difficulty, through his face and his gestures, for the Greek used a mixture of languages and was greatly perturbed when the Jews could not understand him. To add to his difficulties he was driven to talk to people,to unburden his heart.
