by Herz Bergner
It was almost too much for her. She had wanted not to meet Nathan again—never to be seen with him again. People had already talked enough and were keeping a sharp eye on them. But no sooner had Nathan left her for a time without seeing her than she began to long for him again. She longed for him even though she knew he was still on the ship with her. She was overjoyed every time she caught a glimpse of him, even from a distance. She was delighted to see the familiar, beloved face that she knew so well, for it had disappeared completely from her mind when she didn’t see him. When Nathan wasn’t with her she couldn’t remember what he looked like and she became afraid. She had to dig deeply into her memory to recall his soft grey eyes, his unshaven, hollow cheeks, longish nose, slightly stooped shoulders and his narrow figure.
Then she would go to look for him, peering into every corner, afraid that something might have happened to him, but all the time pretending that she wasn’t looking for him. Later, when she had him near her, she didn’t know why she had been so excited and upset. The face that she had so longed for and not been able to recall now appeared ordinary—a face like that of any other young man. When Nathan saw the state she was in, he asked her why she was so restless and upset. She found excuses from everywhere so that she would not reveal herself.
But now she had disclosed her feelings and Nathan well remembered the words she had used. He had only heard such words from her before on one occasion. A few words had escaped her on that beautiful, calm morning when he had told her about his plans as they stood together near the deck rails. He was overcome with joy that she had now forgotten herself and revealed her feelings for him. He felt proud and grew taller in his own eyes. The man in him that had been suppressed now came to life.
That morning Ida hadn’t wanted to talk to him and turned her head away. She was exhausted with the heat although she would not admit it. From a distance he had observed that she went about as the other women did, with an open blouse and a loose skirt, undone, so that it looked as though it would fall down at any moment. Without any modesty she had pulled her skirt up well above her knees which were the golden colour of honey, but Nathan noticed that her skin above her knees was gleaming white. It was the first time he had seen her body so revealed and he had not guessed that her skin would be so transparently white. That very paleness had confused him so that he turned his head away, not to look in her direction. But his eyes were drawn to her again and he saw her brown, chestnut hair so carelessly shorn at the time of the disinfection making her look like a naughty, stubborn boy. Nathan noticed that as her hair had grown a little she had trimmed and styled it so that it curled lightly over her thin, girlish neck and on her forehead. Her carelessly cut hair now added to her charm and he was overcome with sympathy for her.
Nathan had often wondered about her, trying to discover in what way she was different from other women and what it was he saw in her. When she was scantily clad he clearly saw her shoulders and bare arms. She lifted her arms and ran her fingers through her short hair, smoothing it back from her brow and her neck so that it would be cooler for her. Her gestures were abrupt and severe, yet at the same time girlish. Her neck was uncovered, long and slim and proudly erect like a white tower.
Ida was then suffering from the heat and Nathan wished he could make it easier for her by giving her some hope. But as he came closer to her she averted her head and quickly pulled down her dress and her fingers dexterously buttoned up her blouse, right up to the neck as if to spite herself, even though it was so hot.
Now Nathan embraced Ida, at the same time making excuses for himself. But she didn’t even listen properly to him; every word he uttered was wasted and she would not allow him to defend himself. All his talk seemed unnecessary to her and the more tenderness he revealed, the cooler she became and the more angry. His gentleness was unwanted and she couldn’t understand why he was so close to her, nor why, a moment before, she had been so excited and so anxious for a good word from him. Her child and her husband came to her mind and she spoke their names aloud and wept softly; Nathan’s arm that had encircled her so closely and pressed her so strongly to him now only offended her.
But Nathan would not release her and stroked her short curls that fell over her neck. Her hot tears fell on his fingers. And just as at home when her father had hit her and Nathan had torn her out of his hands and soothed her, so now her tears aroused him. One hand caressed her trembling, girlish shoulders and the tears that he allowed to run over the other filled him with delight and a desire to press her to him until she cried out in pain.
She pushed him away but he held her firmly, refusing to let her go. And then he shouted at her so that she was frightened of him. In the darkness he felt her full lips a little chapped and split. He had always had a great desire to kiss them and now he searched with his lips for the dent that divided her upper lip and kissed her so hard that her teeth collided with his.
‘Why are you so cruel? Why are you so bitter?’ he murmured straight into her hot, dry mouth.
She made no answer. Nathan’s hand that so freely and impudently roamed over her loose dress and every fold of her body, which shone white in the darkness, no longer offended her. Their hot breaths mingled and her lips, twisted with pain and desire, freed themselves to cry out once more, soberly and warningly:
‘Nathan!’
But soon there was no more warning in her voice. She repeated the one word, ‘Nathan,’ but now she spoke it with affection and with all the longing that for many years she had carried.
Then she said nothing more and thought no more. There was no one else in the world but herself and Nathan. Later she even forgot that.
CHAPTER X
After that sweltering night Nathan and Ida avoided meeting each other. She couldn’t look him straight in the face and harboured a great resentment towards him. She felt guilty and all her guilt she placed on Nathan. He should not have behaved as he had; he ought not to have forgotten himself. She rarely left the cabin and went to the dining room late, when Nathan would no longer be there. Although often enough she wanted to go to the dining room on time so that she could meet him unexpectedly, and even left the cabin punctually with this resolve, yet as soon as she was on her way her steps began to falter and she followed side passages so that in the end she was late. But when she entered the room and Nathan was not there her heart sank and she felt a great longing for him, reproaching herself for not coming on time.
Nathan also felt guilty and avoided Ida. He felt in his mind the warmth of his son’s hand that back home had led him to his mother, not letting him look at his Aunt Ida. His heart was constricted with suffering and he felt that Ida was avoiding him. So he too avoided the places where he might meet her, coming late or leaving before she appeared. But he also wanted to see her, and although he pretended that he didn’t, he lay in wait for her so that he might unexpectedly run into her. But always at the last moment he wavered and went away with an emptiness in his heart. Although he knew that Ida was not far away, and in his mind’s eye he could see her at the deck rails, on the spiral steps that led to the cabins and in every corner where they had ever met, the feeling that he had lost forever something near and dear clung to him.
The heat had waned; it no longer burned so fiercely. The days stretched long, although night fell quickly and without warning. Bronya Feldbaum didn’t know what to do with herself during the day and waited impatiently for night, when she could meet the well-groomed steward. On the day after the night when the women had so grievously insulted her, she had wandered around chastened and contrite and it was believed that a great change had overcome her. But soon after midday she forgot all about it. She was the same Bronya of old; not a hair on her head had altered. She decked herself out in her bits and pieces scratched up from here and there and put together with a skill that only women possess. Even pieces of men’s clothes went into the making of her finery. And she tied up her short, clipped hair in curl papers so that she resembled a sheep.
&
nbsp; Bronya cajoled the eminent Warsaw doctor’s tiny wife into playing cards with her during the day. She had long wanted to be friends with the doctor’s wife and she was very happy when the other lady agreed to play with her. She thoroughly enjoyed her new social position.
The doctor’s wife was a skilful card player. She was the daughter of very rich parents, from amongst the half assimilated wealthy Jews of Warsaw. After her marriage, when she didn’t have much to do, she had often invited rich women like herself to a game of cards. There was little else to do in the big, spacious rooms of her Warsaw home. She looked after her only son, and above all, cared for her husband, who was more trouble than the child. He couldn’t look after himself and would have gone about neglected, without having anything to eat for days on end, if she hadn’t cared for him. More than once he went out in winter without his coat when the frost was heavy, and he had put on his fur coat in the summer.
Her job had been to watch his every step, brush his clothes, give him his meals and even peel him the occasional orange. It had been the same on the boat, where she followed him with a bowl and forced every spoonful of food upon him. And just as at home where her husband had been absorbed in his surgery and had never had any time for her, so on the ship he had no interest in her. He begged her to leave him alone and he wandered busily about, talking to people and gazing into their faces with his kindly, patient, half-senile eyes.
The doctor’s anxious wife was ready to play cards with Bronya. Perhaps it would help her to forget her worries about her husband, for whom she had the greatest respect as for a stranger, although it was now many years since their wedding. There was only one obstacle in her way; she didn’t want to play for money. She had always been cautious and known the value of a penny—she was no spendthrift. Although she had a little money that she carried on her person for safety, and a few valuable jewels that she had saved, she didn’t want to touch them. She guarded them like the eyes of her head, for they were to restore her husband’s lost health in the land to which they were travelling.
But Bronya had no intention of playing for money. She merely wanted to while away the time. An idea occurred to her: they would play with bits of paper, and she made some banknotes from an old piece of paper. She wrote in figures the value of each note.
The game began and Bronya won. The pile of paper in front of her kept growing. She became so excited with the game that she saw nothing else and she began to count the paper as if it were real. Every piece of paper that she won she guarded, and in her eyes it assumed the value of real money. And she became quite serious, treating the paper as a debt owed to her by the doctor’s wife. She told her that there was no hurry; she was not wanting the money immediately; she would wait.
But the doctor’s wife would have none of it. She became alarmed and, closing her short-sighted eyes like a hen, spoke in a quiet, refined voice that couldn’t hurt a fly. ‘We made an arrangement, Mrs Feldbaum. Don’t you remember? You can’t have forgotten.’
One word led to another and the women began to attack each other. It went so far that Bronya demanded that the doctor’s wife take out her jewels and pay her debt. She threw accusations at the doctor’s wife that there were heretics in her family. She said that it wasn’t right for an honest, virtuous Jewish daughter as she was to have any association with her.
They spoke quietly so that no one overheard and Rockman envied the women because they had found something to do.
Reb Zainval Rockman went about on his own.
Nobody wanted to listen yet again to his endless stories of his two sons or to his musings on whether Jews should be faithful to God or man to have some firm foundation beneath their feet. Rockman’s one dream was to find someone to play chess with.
‘A game of chess would suit me right down to the ground! That’s a sensible game.’
He stopped everyone that he met to urge a game upon them.
‘It would help us to forget some of our troubles,’ he said.
Rockman would even listen to the radio now, although it always brought news of more German victories. It seemed as though the Germans, who were conquering one country after another, were chasing the ship and would soon overtake it. More than once several aeroplanes had appeared over the ship flying in formation. But to whom they belonged no one knew because they flew so high. Everyone became frightened and the ship cowered on the water, shrinking like a clucking hen that has seen an eagle.
Reb Zainval Rockman didn’t want to think about anything. He searched for a game of chess and even stopped Reb Lazar, the grocer, to ask him whether he played.
But Reb Lazar had something else to do. The day passed quickly for him. He hardly looked around before the day was over. His prayers occupied several hours and between prayers he recited psalms and chanted audibly from a holy book. He complained to Rockman that even on Saturday the Jews rarely came together to pray as a congregation. He didn’t, God forbid, want to interfere with anyone else. It wasn’t his affair and he didn’t want to preach to anyone else at a time when he himself wasn’t free from sin. Who was he, after all, an ordinary mortal of flesh and blood, to preach to anyone? It was not his place to put himself in the position of leader, of one who has received a call. He couldn’t place himself above others. But after all, in such bitter times, Jews should hold more firmly to their Jewishness. Why shouldn’t they look into the Holy Book occasionally and now and then recite a chapter of Psalms? Man does not live by bread alone. If Jews remembered God more often, perhaps the Almighty would pay more attention to them.
Reb Lazar had enough to fill out his days with. Since his wife, may she rest in peace, departed from this world, he had to look after himself. That was hard for him. He couldn’t take any food that was not kosher, even if he knew it meant that he would die of hunger. Previously his wife had looked after his food, now he had to do everything himself. He found it hard to approach the sleepy but well-disposed cook who still couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t eat with the others and insisted on doing his own cooking. Reb Lazar tried to make him understand, giving him examples and pointing with his hands, but it could not penetrate the cook’s head. He laughed at Reb Lazar, and his mouth full of big, white teeth gleamed in his plump, olive-dark face.
The cook was never in a hurry. Since he began to get very friendly with Noah he looked with different eyes on the Jews. The friendship began when the cook talked to Noah and told him that his dream was to visit Russia and to see Communism come to his home-country, Greece. He concealed a corner of his kitchen from the captain. There he had written some slogans in crude and twisted letters. He had drawn a hammer and sickle and covered it with a small red flag. He called the corner his ‘red corner’ and spent all his free time there, reading a book or singing songs in a sleepy voice. He had also inscribed a hammer and sickle with chalk on a few blackened tins and frying pans.
As soon as the cook became acquainted with Noah he invited him into the kitchen and his plump, gentle face beamed as he pointed out his ‘corner’. His excitement was so great that he seized Noah in his big, bear-like hands and kissed him in front of all the Jews. His giant-like, well-developed body was filled with joy. Noah was embarrassed and pulled away from his arms, but the cook wouldn’t let him go, repeating over and over again the same thing: ‘Comrade!’
He slapped Noah on the back and disconcerted him with the praise that he liberally bestowed upon him. ‘With me all men are equal, as in Russia, Turks, Jews, Chinese, Greeks. With me all men are brothers. Red blood flows in everyone’s veins. Give me your hand, comrade. Shake for the new world that is coming soon.’
He clasped Noah’s hand and shook it firmly up and down.
Noah stood as if held in a vice and did not know how to answer. Those words of the cook that he understood moved him deeply, and he was pained that he was silent and unable to bring out the words he wanted to say. The other Jews were also moved by the cook’s excitement and his friendliness warmed their hearts. Nevertheless they teased Noah fo
r finding for himself such a good comrade with whom he could be good friends and take a bite together.
For Rockman, it was as if the cook had fallen from Heaven. He had searched every corner without finding a chess set when it occurred to him to go to the cook and ask him about it. And the cook dug up a chess set from somewhere. In truth the board and the men were old and broken. The colour had faded so that it was impossible to tell white from black—but still it was better than nothing. Rockman soon found a way to distinguish the pieces. He tied some black thread around the necks of the black pieces. Then he went to look for Nathan and they sat down for a game.
Rockman enjoyed playing. He was very dignified and he continually moved his skullcap about on his head with his delicate white hands. Whenever he was deeply absorbed in a move his cap sat so low on his forehead that it nearly fell off. He needed only a cigarette to help him organise his thoughts. In his agitation he kept on thrusting his fingers into his vest pocket in which lay the empty cigarette case, forgetting that it was a long time since there had been any cigarettes there.
Although he often thought for a long while before making a move, especially when he was cornered, he complained that Nathan was slow. The heat made Rockman puff into his beard and whenever he was in a dangerous position he thought aloud, talked to himself and allowed his hand to stray over the chessboard. He could dawdle and take time to think, but no one else could.
‘If I go here with the rook, he’ll go there.’ He thought aloud in a chant.
‘If I go there, he’ll go there. I’m already cornered! And how am I to crawl out of this, my friend?’
Rockman had a high opinion of his own game and wanted everyone to see his brilliant moves. But if people stood around and gave him advice he really suffered. He hated advice-givers like poison. Whenever he was advised about a move he would say nothing, but he would slowly rise from his chair and invite the audacious fellow to take his place.
