Between Sky and Sea

by Herz Bergner

  ‘Another trouble on our heads. As if we haven’t had enough!’ they sighed.

  ‘Such terrible heat! Fire is falling from the sky. It has never been so hot!’

  In the cabins it was no longer bearable. It was impossible to breathe and sleep was out of the question. The older people tried to remain in the cabins and sleep, but in the middle of the night they crawled out on to the deck with pillows in their hands, searching amongst the old barrels and boxes for a place to rest their heads.

  The heat continued for days on end and it was difficult to distinguish between day and night. A grey-white haze enveloped everything and blotted out all shapes and contours. Low, heavy clouds lay over the ship and in their hot, steaming breath sky and sea were fused into one dirty, colourless mass. Sometimes a tongue of light pierced the haze—that was the only sign of the sun. The whole world lay breathless and limp and panted for a drink. Everyone expected that rain would fall at any moment and that they would refresh themselves by drinking cool water that would pour from the skies. But no rain came. It seemed that all around the twilight emptiness was an enormous heated oven that spread an insidious and burning heat. No rain came and the tiny ration of water that was distributed daily barely served to moisten their dry, cracked lips.

  More than all the rest Marcus Feldbaum and Mrs Fabyash suffered from thirst. They sat on the deck, tied together by Fate. When it became hot Mrs Fabyash was brought up from the cabin and now she sat like unleavened bread on the deck. She never moved from her spot and she seemed to melt with the heat and spread sideways. Marcus Feldbaum had suffered terribly from hunger, his empty stomach shrinking and becoming sour and bilious even when he no longer suffered from seasickness. And now thirst persecuted him in the same way. He had forgotten about his hunger and his big eyes, colourless like the sea around him, searched for something to drink. He even tried to drink the salt water from the tap to quench the fire that burnt within him. He sprang at the tap passionately and was intercepted just in time. With all the strength of his enormous body he continued to throw himself at the tap, shouting loudly and angrily, and it took him a long time to understand what was being said to him.

  Everybody went about half naked, shedding one article of clothing after another. The women lost their modesty and shuffled about listlessly in their ragged petticoats from which their naked flesh peeped, just as though there was nothing extraordinary about it. Through their untidy, open blouses could be seen their thin breasts that hung tiredly like empty balloons. The men did not wear shirts, but just pulled on their trousers. Some lounged around in their underpants without the strength to move. They were too exhausted even to look for a corner in which to shelter from the inferno. Everywhere it was the same; everything was scorched by the heat—the old boxes, the barrels that fell out of their hoops, the deck boards, the ropes, the torn tarpaulins. No one could touch the rails and ladders for they glistened with heat and big oily drops stood out on their iron skin.

  Although the deck was large enough for everyone to find room to stretch their weary bodies, they all crowded together into one corner and quarrelled over the best place to sleep. They were bad tempered and strained almost to breaking point. They nestled close together, but they could not stand each other, quarrels broke out over trifles and each one insulted the other. It was as though they searched for reasons to quarrel. Sweat poured from half naked bodies and tired snores came from the group as if someone was suffocating.

  Many couldn’t sleep at all. They wandered around from one place to another, always hoping that some other place would be better and that there they would find sleep.

  Nathan and Ida could not close their eyes. They stumbled over the sleeping people in search of a resting place. Nathan trod on someone and immediately a sleepy, angry voice was heard: ‘Where are you going? Why don’t you be careful? Aren’t you used to the dark yet! If you can’t see, carry your eyes in your hands. Don’t walk on people.’

  Nathan quickly withdrew and pulled Ida along with him, both anxious to get away from the place. But the sleepy voice followed them. Nathan fled from the voice, stumbling amongst the lifeboats that gazed towards Heaven with open, black mouths. From the sea rose a vapour as from a boiling cauldron, covering everything like a curtain.

  While Ida and Nathan were stumbling around the deck they met others who were unable to sleep. Rockman was wandering about in an unbuttoned shirt and he questioned Nathan closely on the whereabouts of the ship. It must be close to great deserts for where else could such heat spring from? Nathan was an intelligent young man, so he ought to know something about it. Rockman, himself, was not an illiterate and according to his reckoning they should be in the Red Sea. When Nathan told him that he imagined they were near the equator in the Indian Ocean, he had to explain carefully just where that was. And no matter how often he explained, Rockman still wasn’t sure and kept asking just whereabouts that was.

  On this hot night Rockman was very depressed. All his pride and dignity had left him. He took the captain’s part and said that no one could really blame him. The seas were not certain. The Germans had a hand in everything and spread their nets over all seas and ports. The captain was in the soup himself, afraid to go near any port and having to hide at sea. Even when he did put in somewhere he was ordered to go as soon as it was discovered whom he had on board. Now he was afraid to even try, God pity him! The ship was completely at the mercy of others. What did it have to oppose the Germans with? Perhaps it would be of use to send that young woman—what’s her name, Bronya?—to the captain. Perhaps she might be able to drag out of him exactly where in the world they were. Who could work out his thoughts and movements? We keep on turning round and round on one spot like a merry-go-round and we never get anywhere. It’s a story without an end. And if, with God’s help, we do get to Australia, who knows if we’ll be allowed to land there? Perhaps our papers are not in order? They don’t want to see this little handful of Jews anywhere. Fabyash doesn’t always talk through his hat. We’ve heard of things like this before. What has happened to that young man lately? He’s not the same person any more. And he is, after all, an intelligent fellow who knew how to say something. He could sometimes produce a good thought. Of course he is a little wild and thinks a bit much of himself—but that’s an old story, for who doesn’t think well of himself? A man hangs on and hangs on, but how much can one bear when one is so defenceless? A man is not made of steel.

  Rockman spoke the same words that Fabyash had once spoken and held Nathan by the hand, refusing to let him go. But Nathan was tired and had no answer for Rockman. He didn’t want to say the same things over and over again, to paddle in the same stream again. Then a quiet and nostalgic voice was heard singing a Polish song. The voice stopped and began to recite with great pathos a poem by a classical Polish writer who poured out his longing for his native land. Nathan recognised the poem. He also recognised the voice of Bronya reciting it. The Polish language was rarely heard on the ship and the well-known words of the poet sounded strange yet so dear and intimate in the middle of the hot sea. But Bronya wasn’t allowed to finish the poem; someone interrupted her.

  ‘Poland’s finished! You can forget you’re Polish,’ someone interrupted.

  ‘See how she has begun to sing in the middle of the night! Why, didn’t the Pole bring you enough sorrow that you should now yearn for him? You can say the prayer for the dead for him!’

  Bronya was silent, not knowing who had spoken. But Noah came to her aid. That Noah, who never had any time for his sister and was always abusing her, took her part.

  ‘Why are you making up the account? What do you mean, that we should pray for a dead Poland?’

  ‘Look who is sticking up for Poland now? Just have a look at Poland’s new friend! You said you were in gaol in Poland. Didn’t they plague the Jews to death? Didn’t they torture them?’

  ‘That’s something else. Fascism was responsible for that. The Polish poor didn’t want pogroms. They never tortured the Jews.
’

  ‘If you’re talking so nicely, tell me, why did your friends thrust a knife into Poland’s back? Why did they attack the poor worker and peasant from the rear?’

  ‘No one thrust a knife into Poland’s back, I can tell you. But the Ruthenian and White Russian people have thrown off their yoke now and the Jews that were saved from German hands apparently don’t matter to you. You’ve just left them out of account.’

  ‘Look now he chants as if from a prayer-book, the Galician! I can see that you know the book off by heart. Well, why did you run away and leave others to stroke the walls of the Russian paradise? A Galician has sense! A Galician philosopher always has his head screwed on the right way. You adore the bride from afar.’

  Anything could be said to Noah, but he could not be taunted with the lie that he left when the Red Army was entering his town. That was the worst that could be flung at him—his sorest point. He became very angry. He had always been hot-tempered andacted in the heat of the moment. He was never at a loss for an answer and he never forgave an injustice. Now everything boiled over and his body quivered. Back home in Lvov he had more than once argued with the neighbours who came to his parents’ house and would not agree with his ideas. Although they were poor, without a piece of bread in the house, they had refused to accept the truth that he saw so clearly he could touch it. He had found this difficult to understand and in his excitement he had insulted and quarrelled with his neighbours. And now he was ready to answer the one who had so deeply wounded him. But suddenly voices came from every side.

  ‘Let us sleep! Let us close our eyes. Find some other place to quarrel. Get away from here.’

  When he heard the shouts growing louder and more heated, Noah’s words stuck in his throat and he made no answer.

  Nathan listened to the argument. The voice that abused Noah was familiar to him, but no matter how hard he tried he could not make out whose it was. He was thinking of Poland now conquered and overrun. He remembered the boarding houses that he had lived in in Warsaw. The shrill cries of the vendors and tradesmen, who had continually filled the courtyards with their noise, rang in his ears. How the owners of those boarding houses had plagued him! They had talked him to death, pursued him for rent and he had often had to hide from them to fool them, so that his life was hardly worth living. He had dreamed of journeying abroad and he had studied with determination to get somewhere, to extricate himself from the bog. He sat far into the night by the smoky kerosene lamp, afraid to keep the gas burning late for fear of the owner and the strange fellows who slept in the same room with him. He stared long at the patched and rusty camp stretcher and at the untidy, crumpled bedclothes that his mother had washed, mended and packed into a sack along with a jar of jam. That had been just before he left home and he remembered his mother’s big, honest masculine hands. He sat over his books late into the night, straining his eyes and wetting his burning forehead with cold water but never straightening his bowed shoulders.

  For all his diligent studying the years had passed quickly and brought no results. He had bitten his nails in determination, as was his habit while studying, but he had seen no future before him.

  Many obstacles had been placed in his way. He wasn’t allowed to study what he wanted to. He threw himself from one thing to another and his head was always full of plans that all came to nothing. He had watched his Polish friends get everywhere, do whatever they desired, and he was pushed out of everything. He had had to watch, and swallow his frustration.

  Although Nathan had been weary of everything, now he harboured no resentment for all that had passed. On the contrary he felt nostalgic for the boarding houses with the ill-tempered landladies, the dilapidated houses on Mille Street, where he had lived, for the shrill cries of the second-hand vendors and even for the teachers who had made his road so difficult. He remembered his poor father with his shrunken beard and dried-up lips, his torn coat with a few pins always peeping out from the lapel. And all the time he kept anxiously pushing back his tradesman’s cap. Nathan could clearly see his father and then before his eyes appeared the township and the respectable citizens who did him the honour of shaking his hand, the girls who strolled up and down the marketplace, the Jews with the prayer shawls on their shoulders who came away from their prayers with slow thoughtful steps.

  He remembered a wedding that had taken place at night in the township, near the synagogue in the middle of the marketplace. He saw again a grandmother with a shawl over her head and a loaf of bread in her hand dance towards the bride and bridegroom. He saw the fireworks that spread greenish stars in the night and the melting tallow of guttering candles. He saw outstretched children’s hands and heard the players grow now jolly, now sad. Polish people stood around with the Jews of the township and watched everything, shaking hands with the relatives and wishing them ‘Mazel Tov’.

  Nathan remembered staying with his grandfather in a village when he was very small. He was spending his school vacation at his grandfather’s where there was plenty of good food. He was to put flesh over his bones while he was in the village. His grandfather had taken him every Saturday to pray in a synagogue with hanging brass lamps and a small, sombre altar. He had read from the big, leather, gold-embossed prayer book with his grandfather. It was the only one in the district and Nathan had loved the book so much that he didn’t skip one word of the prayers.

  His grandfather had always promised to leave the prayer book to him. And when his grandfather died he took it for himself after the funeral, when the low, whitewashed room was full of village Jews and peasants who would have laid down their lives for the old man, who affectionately called him ‘Berek’. Nathan quietly pushed a stool up to the shelf where the prayer book lay and furtively hid it under his coat. Then he walked off home with his inheritance.

  The village road smelt of freshly cut hay. The sun streamed down on the leaves of the trees, curled itself round their branches and trembled in the golden dust that rose behind every passing wagon. A solitary frog in a nearby pool, unable to wait for the evening, woke up and croaked sleepily. And a stork with slow strides walked the peaceful fields, looking around like a proprietor. In the wayside shrine where candles burnt continually, little girls with flaxen hair covered the statue of the Virgin with bouquets of flowers that they gathered in the fields. Village Jews plodded home from the market, perspiring and covered in dust. Peasant youths in coarse linen shirts and girls in wide, red-checked, billowing skirts worked in the fields. As Nathan passed them he uttered the words that his grandfather had taught him to use when he met a person working on the land: ‘Praised be God’.

  As it became dark the fields began to talk in hidden voices and Nathan still had a long way to go. His heart began to thump as he remembered his dead grandfather and his strides became longer.The prayer book scorched his hands and caused him great anxiety. A peasant from his grandfather’s village overtook him and, glancing respectfully at his college cap, asked him if he was Berek’s grandson and son of Mr Rieff, the hatmaker in the town. Then he helped him into the wagon and took him home.

  All the rest of his holidays he spent in the town. He and his Jewish and Christian friends, who were also on holiday, paraded in their school uniforms.

  But later, when he went home on holiday, it became lonely and gloomy. After he left secondary school and could not get into the courses he wanted, his Christian friends who had finished their studies and were now in good positions, had nothing more to do with him. In the town Jews were being beaten. A frail Jew, Sisha Sim Michaelis, was so badly beaten that he nearly died. Then his Christian friends felt embarrassed before Nathan and avoided meeting his eyes. But later they pretended not to know him and even began to take part in slanders against the Jews.

  Nathan looked around and noticed that Ida was no longer at his side. The heat had not lessened; it was as humid and sticky as before. The sky was low and heavy over the sea and bulged with heavy clouds. For a moment the moon shone through, glittering like a lance, and
then it was quickly hidden again. The sea stirred lazily, barely disturbing the sleepy, puffy waves and it seemed that the ship stood still.

  Nathan searched for Ida and found her standing alone, far away from anyone. She reproached him for having allowed her to go away. He must be thoroughly tired of her if he didn’t notice whether she was near him or not.

  Ida was very angry but she felt helpless and lost. She complained that Nathan didn’t pay any attention to her. He must have had enough of her. She felt neglected. Whom did she have but Nathan? And when he no longer looked at her it was very hard for her.

  As soon as she uttered these words she regretted them and wanted to withdraw them. She shouldn’t have said that. She shouldn’t have shown Nathan so openly what was going on within her. But it was too late. She felt so sad and dejected now. She had never revealed herself to Nathan before. She had always carefully measured her words and never given him a clue. No matter how much she had wanted to tell him what was in her heart, to nestle her head against him and take hold of his hands to stroke her hot face, she had never in any circumstances allowed herself that.

  Her husband, Hershl, who had remained somewhere at home and whom she had hated from the depths of her heart because he stood between her and Nathan, would not allow her to do that. He tied her hands. She knew that it would be an injustice to Hershl, to whom she should now do no evil, and above all an injustice to her child, her Sarah, whom she had borne to him. And apart from all that, she didn’t want to reveal her feelings for Nathan.

  Although she knew that it wasn’t really so, nevertheless she always imagined that Nathan thought of himself as superior to Hershl, looking down upon him, and was just waiting for her to forget herself. And for this reason she would never favour him with a pleasant word, but always drove him away, although she knew she was hurting him. The deeply-buried sinful thought that both Nathan and she were using the great tragedy that had befallen their nearest never left her for one moment, and always gnawed at her and tortured her. Now that their hands were freed they could be together. It almost seemed as if they had waited for just that.