Between Sky and Sea

by Herz Bergner

  After much effort Nathan learned that the Greek was going back to Australia where he had lived for many years. He had a cafe in a small town and he had been getting on quite well. But he couldn’t find a wife there, for the girls made fun of him whenever he approached them. And he was not attracted to the Australian girls anyway; he couldn’t look at the waitresses who made eyes at every diner. So he had been anxious to bring out a girl from his own home town and had saved shilling by shilling for the day when he could travel home and bring back a respectable girl, a real Greek beauty. But meanwhile he had grown old and unluckily he made his journey just before the war. Now he was taking back with him a wife from his birth place. But who could have a mind for a wife when his country had been overrun? Although he was no longer young he wished he could return and be of some use to his people.

  While he was talking, his wife looked him straight in the face with her large, tragic eyes. She also was no longer young. She was big and dark and in her slow movements she reminded one of a big, black horse. Her husband stroked her head with his toil-worn hand, hard from perpetual dishwashing. Then he straightened his own thin downy hair and gazed helplessly from his dark, squinting eyes over the dining room, ashamed of his deafness before his wife.

  ‘Don’t shout too much,’ he always interrupted Nathan, ‘I can hear, you don’t have to shout. What do you think I am, deaf? I don’t want that added to my troubles!’

  All the same he watched Nathan’s eyes so intently, to read what he said, that he was always covered in sweat. It pleased him to show the Jews that he was a brother with them in their adversity, that he suffered as they did. Every few words he spoke he repeated in English, feeling certain that the Jews must understand that language.

  ‘Me and you, one fate.’ And he pointed to himself and nodded to the Jews.

  Although it was hard work for Nathan, he liked to sit and talk with him. When the Greek sat over the radio and listened helplessly with his deaf ears to the news of his overrun country a paternal care enveloped him. He looked after the decrepit old radio as if it were an antique treasure that he could not bear to leave. The radio croaked hoarsely, gave forth sounds as if it were in great pain and then was suddenly struck dumb and breathless, but he would not leave it. He listened closely to it, looked at it as if it were alive, talked to it, became angry with it and shouted and clenched his fists.

  Ida had no patience with the Greek and was always urging Nathan to leave him or she would go away on her own.

  And she did go away. She ran, taking longer and quicker steps until Nathan could hardly catch up with her. The merest incident, the slightest word, and she was offended. She was always ordering Nathan about in her husky, mannish voice and if he ignored her she became very excited. It was impossible to reason with her, for no sooner was she crossed than she was ablaze.

  For whole days she would lie on her top bunk in the cabin, unwashed and uncombed, and she would allow no one near her. Curled up in a ball she lay half awake and drenched the bedclothes with her tears. She would not touch the food that Nathan with great difficulty obtained from the cook.

  Once when Nathan climbed up to her bunk he jammed his finger and winced with pain. But she didn’t stir; she didn’t even look at him. Then she laughed through her tears, laughed with malice. She was glad that he was hurt.

  ‘Why don’t you wash yourself? Why don’t you comb your hair? Look at your face! Why do you behave so badly?’ Nathan implored her.

  But she didn’t answer him. It was as though he talked to the wall. Then, from her full, chapped lips came peals of laughter while her blazing, amber eyes flashed with pleasure, as if his unhappiness lightened her misery.

  Suddenly she sat up and began to spit out pieces of truth which cut like sharp knives. She complained that Nathan never left her alone. Why did he follow her like a shadow? Why didn’t he remember his wife and child whom he had left in the fire without any protection? Why had he attached himself to her? Why not leave her alone? Hershl and her little Sarah never left her mind for one moment.

  Quickly she uttered these words as if to get rid of them, grinding them out as though the words hurt her and scalded her tongue and by getting rid of them quickly her heart would be eased.

  When he heard her words Nathan stopped, bewildered and at a loss. He felt helpless and it seemed to him as though someone had undressed him and left him naked amongst strangers. He had tormented himself enough. All the sorrows and persecutions of the people who had stayed at home were deeply etched on his uneasy conscience. In Greece, at the home of the Jewish merchant who had treated them so handsomely, given them a roof over their heads and supplied them with everything for a long while, Nathan had not been able to rest. He had always in his mind the persecutions of his people and held himself to blame, although he knew it was foolish to think like that. Why had he run away like a coward? What had he done to deserve a good time when others were suffering so? Why was he so chosen! If only he hadn’t run away he could be nearer to his own people. This was why he hadn’t wanted to get on the ship for Australia when the merchant had fixed everything up for them. How could he deserve better than his child? How could be deserve better than his wife, Faigele, who had paid for everything?

  As he thought of Faigele his heart shrank. What did she ever get from him? All the time they were together he had remained a stranger to her. He had never shared his plans with her, never talked intimately with her. She accepted everything as if it were her fate. She suffered in silence as though she had not earned the right to anything better. A proud woman, she had said nothing to him, never worried him with a complaint.

  His thin, fair-haired little boy had seemed to understand him. This child, who had inherited the calm and patience of Faigele, had felt that his father was not on the best terms with his mother, that there was something wrong between them. The boy felt that his mother was unhappy and would not leave her side, as though he wanted to take his father’s place. He had always looked pleadingly at Nathan, from his soft, grey eyes, as if begging his father not to be unkind to his mother. Once, while Nathan was gazing at Ida the boy had come to him and awakened him as from a dream, diverting his father’s gaze from his Aunt Ida, and had taken him into the room where his mother was.

  Now Nathan saw his son before him, felt his warm, bony hand within his own and heard the child’s soft voice calling:

  ‘Come to Mother, Father; Mother wants you. She sent me to call you.’

  Nathan left Ida’s cabin, determined never to see her again. They must never meet again, he thought; they must never see each other again.

  CHAPTER IV

  For a few days they did not see each other. Nathan did not appear on deck, but sat locked in his cabin and Ida lay in her bunk. When Nathan could no longer stand his cabin, where the air was thick and heavy to suffocation point, he found a spot on the deck and sat there all day. The sickly, salty odour of the sweat and dirt of the many people on board who had not washed themselves for weeks and had slept packed into dark cabins clung to every wrinkle of his face and hands and every fold of the clothes the Jewish merchant in Greece had given him. Even out in the air the sour odour would not leave his clothes, now threadbare and grimy, that hung loosely on his bony body and made him look like a boy in his father’s clothes.

  Nathan sat in a corner in the dark until late at night and when he returned to his cabin to go to sleep he noticed that someone had been at his bunk. His bed had been aired and made and the straw pillows had been shaken up and tidied. It was easy to see that a woman’s hand had been there.

  Nathan lay awake all night. Unrest had seized him and prevented him from closing his eyes although he was tired. He lay as if suspended in mid-air, not wanting to lose the faint but familiar feminine scent, reluctant to disturb the bedclothes that a feminine hand had so devotedly arranged.

  It was only towards morning that Nathan fell asleep. He slept heavily without stirring until well into the day and when he awoke he felt as if he had overs
lept a very important engagement. Then he saw a freshly washed shirt near his bunk. Last night in the darkness he had not noticed it.

  Nathan took in his hand the shirt which was stiff from salt water and he remembered everything from the previous night. The joy that had been interrupted by a few hours’ sleep enveloped him. The shirt that Ida had washed for him still held the touch of her fingers despite the odour of sea and salt. He stroked the shirt which she had held, was loath to wear it and hung it again where he had found it.

  Still he did not go to her cabin. Several days passed during which he knew all her movements and even what she thought of doing. But he avoided her, did everything in his power not to meet her. And when he stood before the door of her cabin, he could not bring himself to open it.

  Often while he stood there, unable to make up his mind whether to go in or not, he encountered Bronya, a plump, pretty young married woman who slept in the same cabin as Ida and who preferred to speak only Polish. These accidental encounters appeared to startle Bronya, who drew back with a surprised shriek.

  ‘Goodness, how you frightened me!’

  ‘Excuse me. Sorry.’

  But Nathan noticed that the whole thing was not so innocent, that Bronya was watching him from behind the door. She had discovered that he and Ida were not a married couple and she kept an eye on them with feminine curiosity, never letting them out of her sight. Now everything became clear to Nathan. He had taken no notice of Bronya at all and this had annoyed her because she was accustomed to men noticing her and paying attention to her.

  Bronya was the wife of big, broad-shouldered Marcus Feldbaum, who had been dubbed ‘the ox’ on board the ship because of his large, watery dull eyes and his enormous hands and feet, and because he was frightened to death of his wife and had no idea of the tricks she played behind his back.

  Although Feldbaum had been a well-respected citizen at home, where he had owned a good many acres of land near Lvov in Galicia, he behaved simply and was friendly with everybody. He was slow and stolid, with much of the Ukrainian peasant in him and nothing in the world ever angered or excited him. He never interfered in anybody else’s business and so he was hardly noticed on the ship. He wore a green shooting cap, riding breeches and high boots and smoked coarse tobacco which he rolled himself just like the Ukrainian peasants. He guarded his tobacco like the eyes in his head. But he had one weakness and that was food; he liked to eat a lot. And in these hungry days on the ship when the only meal of the day was a little soup with beans or barley, he suffered a great deal. He felt hungrier than most people and his big body constantly clamoured for food and became thinner from day to day. Feldbaum became emaciated and the skin on his face hung loosely in little bags and from his big, cloudy eyes shone the pain of a starving ox. He was a completely changed man. He dreamt only of food and remembered all the time how his wife had cooked delicacies for him. He could still taste the brown Galician pies stuffed with black maize and meat, the crisply fried pieces of chicken fat, the red Ukrainian borsht cooked with a fat marrow bone and the Hungarian meat jelly with garlic and pepper which he loved as much as life itself.

  Bronya was the very opposite of her husband. She came from a poor tradesman’s family and no sooner had she married well than she began to behave completely above herself and went to town in a britzchka every day. She never put a foot over the doorstep of her parents’ poor home, but she ran to every Polish theatre and dance hall. She was gaudily dressed in frocks and hats from the most expensive shops. Only one thing poisoned her life—she was afraid of her brother, Noah, the carpenter’s assistant. She was very much ashamed of him and to make it worse he was a ‘Red’. Once, when he met her in the street, he upbraided her for not assisting her parents and making him shoulder the whole burden of the household.

  Even on board the ship her brother, who had come with them, worried her. Nothing that she did pleased him and he was always on her husband’s side.

  But Bronya didn’t take much notice of him. She played the same part as she had at home, promenading the deck with all the assurance of a handsome woman who knows that men will make sacrifices for her. Although everyone else’s clothes were ragged and torn and no one had much heart for dressing up, Bronya still found something with which to adorn herself. She dug up coloured ribbons and bits and pieces to decorate her person and to bind her thick, black hair. As she walked she swung her full hips and revealed her rounded throat, so fully displayed that her breasts, pressed together like two ripe apples, furtively peeped out. The sailors, hungry for women after long weeks at sea, devoured her with their eyes, measuring the worth of every part. They winked suggestively at her, called her a temptress and talked obscenely amongst themselves to appease their hunger.

  ‘She’s worth a sin.’ They smacked their lips as over a tasty morsel. ‘Devil take the Jews, but there are some pretty women amongst them. It would be worth a month’s pay to sleep with her for just one night!’

  But Bronya didn’t look at them, although, to tell the truth, it gave her pleasure when their eyes followed her. To spite them she swung her full hips more provocatively and passed so close to them that their heads almost began to swim—but that was all.

  One might almost have thought that she had no interest in men. But the whole ship knew that Bronya wasn’t quite as innocent as that; that every night when it became dark she dressed herself in her coloured bits and pieces, combed her hair carefully before the broken and blackened mirror from which she never parted and met the tall, elegant steward. In a corner hidden from prying eyes she sat with him until late into the night. And it was not all for love! For from him she got biscuits and chocolates which she was always pulling out of her pockets to eat. As a result her cheeks were still round and rosy while those of all the other women were emaciated and sunken. Although all the rest of us are starving, they said, no one else sells herself.

  She would never have been forgiven if she had kept for herself all the good things she obtained from the steward, but she was often pushing the delicacies into the hands of the small children on the ship. Bronya herself had no children and she longed for them. She loved to play with the children and invented all sorts of games for them. But especially she liked the little girls. She dressed them up as she dressed herself, in the same coloured ribbons and pieces, loved to comb their hair and encouraged them to look into her worn mirror to admire themselves. To these children she gave some of her chocolates and biscuits.

  For this Bronya was forgiven everything. Averting their glances, the passengers discussed among themselves whether it would be right to send her to the captain to make enquiries for them. It was none other than Fabyash who suggested this and he argued with great passion:

  ‘Perhaps...Perhaps she will find favour in the captain’s eyes.’

  Fabyash’s small, black eyes blazed with conviction and they glanced quickly here and there as if they wanted to run away.

  ‘Such a lively person! Such a beauty! When the captain sees her he will become as gentle as a lamb. And at last we will know whether we will be allowed to land somewhere or whether we must die on the sea! This is a story without an end. It is unbearable!’

  Nathan had heard but not heeded some of these stories of Bronya. They had never been of any interest to him and they had never stayed in his mind. But now before Ida’s door where he stood with Bronya, he remembered them all. So as not to direct attentionto himself and Ida, he decided to go into her cabin quickly. Bronya looked at him knowingly, with the glance of a sinful wife who loves to catch everyone else at the critical moment so as to appear innocent and free of her own sins.

  Nathan went in to Ida and found her lying on her bed exactly as he had seen her when he left her several days ago. It was as though she had not left the bed in all that time, not moved from that position. When he entered she hardly raised her eyes as if it was no surprise to her that he should come back. She had been certain of it from the beginning.

  Without a word, Nathan sat down by he
r side, and she spoke to him in an ordinary tone, as though she was resuming an interrupted conversation. Her alarm at his sudden disappearance, that had not left her for a moment, vanished as he sat down and she was no longer interested in him or anything else.

  But she wasn’t too tired to continue to talk about Hershl, Sarah and her father and mother somewhere in Poland.

  ‘Who knows what has happened to them? Are they still alive?’ Not one reply had come to all the letters and postcards they had sent from Greece. Little Sarah constantly came to her in her dreams. With arms outstretched from the fire, she called to her, ‘Mama...Mama, save me. Why have you left me? I suffer such torment, Mama!’ And even now that she was awake she could still hear her child’s pleading voice. She saw still the hands outstretched from the fire and she cried aloud with pain, covering her eyes. She covered her ears with her hands, feeling that her misery was beyond her strength to bear.

  Ida slowly sat up on her bed and idly smoothed the pillow, while she drew out a piece of narrow, pink ribbon. Nathan felt a stab of pain in his heart as he recognised the hair ribbon that little Sarah had worn when they fled from Warsaw. Ida had never shown it to him before and now that he saw it he became afraid. She caressed the ribbon in her hands, made a bow and soon untied it. She told him how she had tied it in Sarah’s dark hair and looked to see if it matched the child’s blue eyes. Then something had told her heart that it was the last time she would plait her child’s hair. Her heart was heavy and throbbed with longing. Ida repeated her mother’s saying: ‘The heart never lies. It always knows everything beforehand.’

  She could not remember how it was that she had the ribbon now. Her memory had become weak. All she knew was that she would never again plait her child’s hair.