Tzili

by Aharon Appelfeld

  And the next day when the stretcher bearers lifted the stretcher onto their shoulders and set out at the head of the convoy, a mighty song burst from their throats. A rousing sound, like pent-up water bursting from a dam. “We are the torch bearers,” roared the stretcher bearers, and everyone else joined in.

  They carried the stretcher along the creeks and sang. The summer, the glorious summer, turned every corner golden. Tzili herself closed her eyes and tried to make the giddiness go away. The merchant urged the stretcher bearers on: “Run, boys, run. The child needs a doctor.” All his anxieties gathered together in his face. And when they stopped he would sit next to her and feed her. He bought whatever he could lay his hands on, but to Tzili he gave only milk products and fruit. Tzili had lost her appetite.

  “Thank you,” said Tzili.

  “There’s no reason to thank me.”

  “Why not?”

  “What else have I got to do?” His eyes opened and in the white of the left eye a yellow stain glittered. His despair was naked.

  “You’re helping me.”

  “What of it?”

  And Tzili stopped thanking him.

  At night he would fold his legs and sleep at her side. And Tzili was suddenly freed of the burden of her survival. The stretcher bearers took turns carrying her from place to place. There was not a village or a town to be seen, only here and there a house, here and there a farmer.

  “Where are you from?” asked Tzili.

  The merchant told her, unwillingly and without going into detail, but he did tell her about Palestine. In his youth he had wanted to go to Palestine. He had spent some time on a Zionist training farm, and he even had a certificate, but his late father had fallen ill and his illness had lasted for years. After that he had married and had children.

  There was nothing captivating in the way he spoke. It was evident that he wanted to cut things short in everything concerning himself, like a merchant who put his trust in practical affairs and knew that they took precedence over emotions. Tzili asked no further. He himself left the stretcher only to fetch milk for her. Tzili drank the milk in spite of herself, so that he would not worry.

  He never asked: “Where are you from?” or “What happened to you?” He would sit by her side as dumb as an animal. His face was ageless. Sometimes he looked old and clumsy and sometimes as agile as a man of thirty.

  Once Tzili tried to get off the stretcher. He scolded her roundly. On no account was she to get off the stretcher until she saw a doctor. He knew that this was so from the first aid course.

  And the fat woman who had saved Tzili started entertaining them again at night. She would sing and recite and expose her fat thighs. The merchant raised Tzili’s head and she saw everything. She felt no affection for any of them, but they were carrying her, taking turns to carry her, from place to place. Between one pain and the next she wanted to say a kind word to the merchant, but she was afraid of offending him. He for his part walked by her side like a man doing his duty, without any exaggeration. Tzili grew accustomed to him, as if he were an irritating brother.

  And thus they reached Zagreb. Zagreb was in turmoil. In the yard of the Joint Distribution Committee people were distributing biscuits, canned goods, and colored socks from America. In the courtyard they all mingled freely: visionaries, merchants, moneychangers, and sick people. No one knew what to do in the strange, half-ruined city. Someone shouted loudly: “If you want to get to Palestine, you’d better go to Naples. Here they’re nothing but a bunch of money-grubbing profiteers and crooks.”

  The stretcher bearers put the stretcher down in a shady corner and said: “From now on somebody else can take over.” The merchant was alarmed by this announcement and he implored them: “You’ve done great things, why not carry on?” But they no longer took any notice of him. The sight of the city had apparently confused them. Suddenly they looked tall and ungainly. In vain the merchant pleaded with them. They stood their ground: “From now on it’s not our job.” The merchant stood helplessly in the middle of the courtyard. There was no doctor present, and the officials of the Joint Committee were busy defending themselves from the survivors, who assailed their caged counters with great force.

  If only the merchant had said, “I can’t go on anymore,” it would have been easier for Tzili. His desperate scurrying about hurt her. But he did not abandon her. He kept on charging into the crowd and asking: “Is there a doctor here? Is there a doctor here?”

  People came and went and in the big courtyard, enclosed in a wall of medium height, men and women slept by day and by night. Every now and then an official would emerge and threaten the sleepers or the people besieging the doors. The official’s neat appearance recalled other days, but not his voice.

  And there was a visionary there too, thin and vacant-faced, who wandered through the crowds muttering: “Repent, repent.” People would throw him a coin on condition that he shut up. And he would accept the condition, but not for long.

  Pain assailed Tzili from every quarter. Her feet were frozen. The merchant ran from place to place, drugged with the little mission he had taken upon himself. No one came to his aid. When night fell, he put his head between his knees and wept.

  In the end a military ambulance came and took her away. The merchant begged them: “Take me, take me too. The child has no one in the whole world.” The driver ignored his despairing cries and drove away.

  Tzili’s pains were very bad, and the sight of the imploring merchant running after the ambulance made them worse. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t have the strength.

  32

  IT WAS A makeshift hospital housed in an army bar racks partitioned with blankets. Soldiers and partisans, women and children, lay crowded together. Screams rose from every side. Tzili was placed on a big bed, apparently requisitioned from one of the bombed houses.

  For days she had not heard the throbbing of the fetus. Now it seemed to her that it was stirring again. The nurse sponged her down with a warm, wet cloth and asked: “Where are you from?” And Tzili told her. The broad, placid face of the gentile nurse brought her a sudden serenity. It was evident that the young nurse came from a good home. She did her work quietly, without superfluous gestures.

  Tzili asked wonderingly: “Where are you from?” “From here,” said the nurse. A disinterested light shone from her blue eyes. The nurse told her that every day more soldiers and refugees were brought to the hospital. There were no beds and no doctors. The few doctors there were torn between the hospitals scattered throughout the ruined city.

  Later Tzili fell asleep. She slept deeply. She saw Mark and he looked like the merchant who had taken care of her. Tzili told him that she had been obliged to sell all the clothes in the haversack and in the commotion she had lost the haversack too. Perhaps it was with the merchant. “The merchant?” asked Mark in surprise. “Who is this merchant?” Tzili was alarmed by Mark’s astonished face. She told him, at length, of all that had happened to her since leaving the mountain. Mark bowed his head and said: “It’s not my business anymore.” There was a note of criticism in his voice. Tzili made haste to appease him. Her voice choked and she woke up.

  The next day the doctor came and examined her. He spoke German. Tzili answered his hurried questions quietly. He told the nurse that she had to be taken to the surgical ward that same night. Tzili saw the morning light darken next to the window. The bars reminded her of home.

  They took her to the surgical ward while it was still light. There was a queue and the gentile nurse, who spoke to her in broken German mixed with Slavic words, held her hand. From her Tzili learned that the fetus inside her was dead, and that soon it would be removed from her womb. The anesthetist was a short man wearing a Balaklava hat. Tzili screamed once and that was all.

  Then it was night. A long night, carved out of stone, which lasted for three days. Several times they tried to wake her. Medics and soldiers rushed frantically about carrying stretchers. Tzili wandered in a dark stone tunnel, st
rangers and acquaintances passing before her eyes, clear and unblurred. I’m going back, she said to herself and clung tightly to the wooden handle.

  When she woke the nurse was standing beside her. Tzili asked, for some reason, if the merchant too had been hurt. The nurse told her that the operation had not taken long, the doctors were satisfied, and now she must rest. She held a spoon to her mouth.

  “Was I good?” asked Tzili.

  “You were very good.”

  “Why did I scream?” she wondered.

  “You didn’t scream, you didn’t make a sound.”

  In the evening the nurse told her that she had not stirred from the hospital for a whole week. Every day they brought more soldiers and refugees, some of them badly hurt, and she could not leave. Her fiancé was probably angry with her. Her round face looked worried.

  “He’ll take you back,” said Tzili.

  “He’s not an easy man,” confessed the nurse.

  “Tell him that you love him.”

  “He wants to sleep with me,” the nurse whispered in her ear.

  Tzili laughed. The thin gruel and the conversation distracted her from her pain. Her mind was empty of thought or sorrow. And the pain too grew duller. All she wanted was to sleep. Sleep drew her like a magnet.

  33

  SHE FELL ASLEEP again. In the meantime the soldiers and refugees crammed the hut until there was no room to move. The medics pushed the beds together and they moved Tzili’s bed into the doorway. She slept. Someone strange and far away ordered her not to dream, and she obeyed him and stopped dreaming. She floated on the surface of a vacant sleep for a few days, and when she woke her memory was emptier than ever.

  The hut stretched lengthwise before her, full of men, women, and children. The torn partitions no longer hid anything. “Don’t shout,” grumbled the medics, “it won’t do you any good.” They were tired of the commotion and of the suffering. The nurses were more tolerant, and at night they would cuddle with the medics or the ambulant patients.

  Tzili lay awake. Of all her scattered life it seemed to her that nothing was left. Even her body was no longer hers. A jumble of sounds and shapes flowed into her without touching her.

  “Are you back from your leave?” she remembered to ask the nurse.

  “I quarreled with my fiancé.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s jealous of me. He hit me. I swore never to see him again.” Her big peasant hands expressed more than her face.

  “And you, did you love him?” she asked Tzili without looking at her.

  “Who?”

  “Your fiancé.”

  “Yes,” said Tzili, quickly.

  “With Jews, perhaps, it’s different.”

  Bitter lines had appeared overnight on her peasant’s face. Tzili now felt a kind of solidarity with this country girl whose fiancé had beaten her with his hard fists.

  At night the hut was full of screams. One of the medics attacked a refugee and called him a Jewish crook. A sudden dread ran through Tzili’s body.

  The next day, when she stood up, she realized for the first time that she had lost her sense of balance too. She stood leaning against the wall, and for a moment it seemed to her that she would never again be able to stand upright without support.

  “Haven’t you seen a haversack anywhere?” she asked one of the medics.

  “There’s disinfection here. We burn everything.”

  Women who were no longer young stood next to the lavatories and smeared creams on their faces. They spoke to each other in whispers and laughed provocatively. The years of suffering had bowed their bodies but had not destroyed their will to live. One of the women sat on a bench and massaged her swollen legs with pulling, clutching movements.

  Later the medics brought in a lot of new patients. They reclassified the patients and put the ones who were getting better out in the yard.

  They put Tzili’s bed out too. All the gentile nurse’s pleading was in vain.

  The next day officials from the Joint Committee came to the yard and distributed dresses and shoes and flowered petticoats. There was a rush on the boxes, and the officials who had come to give things to the women had to beat them off instead. Tzili received a red dress, a petticoat, and a pair of high-heeled shoes. A heavy smell of perfume still clung to the crumpled goods.

  “What are you fighting for?” an official asked accusingly.

  “For a pretty dress,” one of the women answered boldly.

  “You people were in the camps weren’t you? From you we expect something different,” said someone in an American accent.

  Later the gentile nurse came and spoke encouragingly to Tzili. “You must be strong and hold your head high. Don’t give yourself away and don’t show any feelings. What happened to you could have happened to anyone. You have to forget. It’s not a tragedy. You’re young and pretty. Don’t think about the past. Think about the future. And don’t get married.”

  She spoke to her like a loyal friend, or an older sister. Tzili felt the external words spoken by the gentile nurse strengthening her. She wanted to thank her and she didn’t know how. She gave her the petticoat she had just received from the Joint Committee. The nurse took it and put it into the big pocket in her apron.

  Early in the morning they chased everyone out of the yard.

  34

  NOW EVERYONE streamed to the beach. Fishermen stood by little booths and sold grilled fish. The smell of the fires spread a homely cheerfulness around. Before the war the place had evidently been a jolly seaside promenade. A few traces of the old life still clung to the peeling walls.

  Beyond the walls lay the beach, white and spotted with oil stains, here and there an old signpost, a few shacks and boats. Tzili was weak and hungry. There was no familiar face to which she could turn, only strange refugees with swollen packs on their backs and hunger and urgency on their faces. They streamed over the sand to the sea.

  Tzili sat down and watched. The old desire to watch came back to her. At night the people lit fires and sang rousing Zionist songs. No one knew how long they would be there. They had food. Tzili too went down to the sea and sat among the refugees. The wound in her stomach was apparently healing. The pain was bad but not unendurable.

  “These fish are excellent.”

  “Fish is good for you.”

  “I’m going up to buy another one.”

  These sentences for some reason penetrated into Tzili’s head, and she marveled at them.

  Somewhere a quarrel broke out. A hefty man shouted at the top of his voice: “No one’s going to kill me anymore.” Somewhere else people were dancing the hora. One of the refugees sitting next to Tzili remarked: “Palestine’s not the place for me.”

  “Why not?” his friend asked him teasingly.

  “I’m tired.”

  “But you’re still strong.”

  “Yes, but there’s no more faith in me.”

  “And what are you going to do instead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Someone lit an oil lamp and illuminated the darkness. The voice of the refugee died down.

  And while Tzili sat watching a fat woman approached her and said: “Aren’t you Tzili?”

  “Yes,” she said. “My name is Tzili.”

  It was the fat woman who had entertained them on their way to Zagreb, singing and reciting and baring her fleshy thighs.

  “I’m glad you’re here. They’ve all abandoned me,” she said and lowered her heavy body to the ground. “With all the pretty shiksas here, what do they need me for?”

  “And where are you going to go?” said Tzili carefully.

  “What choice do I have?” The woman’s reply was not slow in coming.

  For a moment they sat together in silence.

  “And you?” asked the woman.

  Tzili told her. The fat woman stared at her, devouring every detail. All the great troubles inhabiting her great body seemed to make way for a moment for Tzili’s secret.

&nbs
p; “I too have nobody left in the world. At first I didn’t understand, now I understand. There’s the world, and there’s Linda. And Linda has nobody in the whole wide world.”

  One of the officials got onto a box. He spoke in grand, thunderous words. As if he had a loudspeaker stuck to his mouth. He spoke of Palestine, land of liberty.

  “Where can a person buy a grilled fish?” said Linda. “I’m going to buy a grilled fish. The hunger’s driving me out of my mind. I’ll be right back. Don’t you leave me too.”

  Tzili was captivated for a moment by the speaker’s voice. He thundered about the need for renewal and dedication. No one interrupted him. It was evident that the words had been pent up in him for a long time. Now their hour had come.

  Linda brought two grilled fish. “Linda has to eat. Linda’s hungry.” She spoke about herself in the third person. She held a fish in a cardboard wrapper out to Tzili.

  Tzili tasted and said: “It tastes good.”

  “Before the war I was a cabaret singer. My parents disapproved of my way of life,” Linda suddenly confessed.

  “They’ve forgiven you,” said Tzili.

  “No one forgives Linda. Linda doesn’t forgive herself.”

  “In Palestine everything will be different,” said Tzili, repeating the speaker’s words.

  Linda chewed the fish and said nothing.

  Tzili felt a warm intimacy with this fat woman who spoke about herself in the third person.

  All night the speakers spoke. Loud words flooded the dark beach. A thin man spoke of the agonies of rebirth in Palestine. Linda did not find these voices to her taste. In the end she could no longer restrain herself and she called out: “We’ve had enough words. No more words.” And when the speaker took no notice of her threats she went and stood next to the box and announced: “This is fat Linda here. Don’t anyone dare come near this box. I’m declaring a cease-words. It’s time for silence now.” She went back and sat down. No one reacted. People were tired, they huddled in their coats. After a few moments she said to herself: “Phooey. This rebirth makes me sick.”