“He’s not even listening to us,” one of them might say.
“Dr. Sammelsohn, are you even listening to us?” waved his hand before my eyes.
“She’s moved into a new apartment — that’s what we’re trying to tell you.”
“It’s outside the ghetto.”
“Yes, that’s the amazing thing!”
“It’s directly across from where you stay when you’re smuggling.”
“Could you please keep your voices down!”
“In fact, looking through your window, you can see directly into hers.”
THE LESS SAID about my smuggling, the better. There was nothing heroic about it. Thanks to my fluency in German, I’d been impressed into the underground and given a key to an empty apartment. Inside the apartment was a wardrobe, and inside of the wardrobe was the uniform of a German captain. (The underground employed a small cabinet of tailors, and one of these, a diminutive fellow with a hump on his back, had paid me a clandestine visit two or three weeks previous.) Whenever I put it on, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. The transformation was too dispiriting. At my age and with the lowish rank my handlers had assigned to me, no one would mistake me for anything but a lifelong military man who hadn’t had the verve to succeed. Invisible to the German soldiers I encountered, I was nevertheless terrifying to the Poles and the Jews who crossed my path. Though a gun came with the uniform, I didn’t have the nerve to inquire if it was loaded. I hoped not. Having it made me nervous.
Though Chłodna Street was in the Aryan Quarter, it linked the large ghetto with the smaller one, and we were all forced, at various times, to cross it. Doing so filled me with terror. How ludicrous to suppose I wouldn’t be unmasked here and shot! Despite my gleaming leather boots and my oiled revolver, despite my clean-shaven cheeks stinging against the morning air, despite the sneer I wore, for good measure, between those cheeks, what was I but an overdressed Jew? (And why shouldn’t I believe what they had always told us about ourselves, that our smell was different from theirs, that the shape of our eyes gave us away, that our nose, our gait, the very curve of our spine marked us from a hundred meters away?) There was always a throng gathered at the Chłodna crossing, men and women stamping and fretting on both sides of the street, preoccupied with the business of saving their lives. At the guard’s shrill whistle, it was all I could do not to throw up my hands and surrender. Though my presence had provoked the whistling, it wasn’t to stop me, I realized, but to permit me, a German captain, to cross.
We saluted each other, this guard and I, traffic grinding to a halt on either side of me. I stepped into the street, the swarm of nervous Jews keeping a respectful distance behind me.
Only in the Polish Quarter did the dread drop from my shoulders. Here, children chased one another in parks, and lovers were quarreling. I found a bench, hidden in a grove of trees, where I vomited and wept. Eventually, I made my way to the address I’d been asked to memorize. And there, I’d sit in the back room until I heard another key turning in the front door and a bag falling on the parlor table, followed by a brisk rapping, in code. After that, the door was shut and the lock locked. Twenty minutes later, I’d enter the parlor and conceal whatever contraband had been left there — food, guns, messages, bullets, whatever — in the thousand pockets sewn secretly into my uniform by my humpbacked tailor.
In truth, I would never have searched for Ita myself, nor even made inquiries into her whereabouts. Nothing would have been more frightening to a Jewish woman living a double life in the Polish Quarter than having a German officer asking after her. But as it turned out, I didn’t need to. The angels were correct: the woman whom they endeavored to convince me was Ita (the name would have meant nothing to her, I suppose) did in fact keep an apartment directly across from the one the underground had assigned me; and it was also true, as the angels had additionally claimed, that because my rooms were a story higher than hers, I could see into her windows from my own, and never more clearly than at dusk.
How to justify this Peeping Tomfoolery? If I believed that and were little more than feverish projections appearing in the Magic Lantern of my brain, manifesting from a combination of hunger, anxiety, and despair, it made no sense to credit their preposterous claims. Whoever she was, I was convinced this young doctor was not Ita, and yet, for reasons I can’t explain, it was impossible to repress the thrill I experienced each time I caught sight of her through the twin veils of our windows, undoing her coat or removing her hat, tossing it onto a table and letting her hair drop about her shoulders.
She was a not unattractive woman, and each time she turned her back on me in order to light her stove, for instance, I couldn’t help admiring her backside and her shapely flanks.
Unable to stop myself, I reached for the binoculars with which, along with the gun and the whistle, and half a dozen other wartime accoutrements, my uniform came equipped, and unclasped them from their holster.
One evening, I watched as she dragged a big brass tub into the middle of her kitchen and began filling it with water heated on the stove. I resolved to put an end to this ocular trespass and had even begun drawing the curtains when she lifted both her arms to unbutton the top of her dress. Instead, I adjusted the focus on my binoculars as she lowered her arms and reached behind herself for the lower buttons. Letting the garment fall to the floor, she stepped out of it before picking it up with her bare foot and placing it on a chair. Reaching back again with both arms, she unhooked her brassiere, and her two small breasts fell from their binding. With a little skip, she stepped out of her underpants, and though I cautioned myself to turn away, to look away, instead, I admired the dark triangle of her sex as she lifted first one leg and then the next over the rim of the tub.
A low moan escaped from my mouth, and I chided myself. Hadn’t I been warned against making noise of any kind. The walls were thin, and this apartment was assumed by the residents of the building to be empty. But even worse: wasn’t this exactly the way I’d encountered Ita that first time in Vienna, attending Dr. Herzl’s play at the Carl, dressed in the costume of another man, gazing at her through a lorgnette?
Had nothing in my life changed or progressed since that night? I threw down the field glasses, and as I did, I found myself thinking of my father, his saturnine face appearing in my mind’s eye. When I was young enough that it mattered, he’d broken something deep within me. Thanks to that brokenness, I’d lurched through my life with a crooked gait, listing to the side, never quite arriving where I intended, and the more I attempted to straighten myself, the crookeder I became. I was an old man now, and my tormentor was long dead, but, as with any ancient hurt, the wound ached from time to time.
Why had he forced Ita, this eternal bride, onto me? Were we truly fated to each other? Would we just keep chasing each other through the millennia, as we had since the giving of the Torah, if Dr. Freud’s chart was to be believed? I’d broken all my promises to her, and in return she’d destroyed everything I loved, all for the sake of some selfish reward. Though neither nor would reveal to me the terms of the bargain she’d made with them, it wasn’t egoism that made me suspect it had to do with me. When had Ita ever thought of anything but her all-consuming passion for my person? One had only to watch and like shadchens hoping to marry off two mamzers, to understand what she was up to: at last, after chasing each other through various worlds and incarnations, we’d reunite and consummate our love. That our earthly reunion should occur under the inhuman conditions of the ghetto, I chalked up to Heaven’s great irony. When, after all, had God ever kept His word beyond the strict measure of the Law? If a reunion with me was indeed the favor she’d requested of the Celestial Courts, Heaven, I felt certain, would see to it that our life together was as short and painful as possible.
Raising her arm, the woman across the way, whoever she was, brought a palmful of bathwater to her shoulder and her neck. She lathered her underarm and her chest with soap, and she threw the water against her bosom in order to rinse
it off. Finally, I could take no more of it. I left the apartment, though no contraband had been delivered. Slamming the door and thundering down the stairs, I ran out to the street and returned to the Zamenhofs’ old house in the ghetto, where I spent a sleepless night, my body alive with electric trembling.
MEANWHILE, AS THE saying goes, the rebbe neither slumbered nor slept. In addition to his weekly words of encouragement, those fractious disputations with the Holy One held before a dwindling jury of his Hasidim, he was praying to the Same while meditating on the higher realms and performing whatever other feats a rebbe of his caliber performs. It was around this time, if I’m remembering correctly, that he conceived of the idea of immersing in a mikve as a further act of sabotage.
“Ah, Cousin,” he said, removing his glasses and laying them on top of the growing pile of manuscript pages during one of our Sunday morning sessions, “Rosh Hashanah has now passed, and soon it will be Yom Kippur.”
He tossed a melancholy glance through the grey panes of his study window.
“I suppose that’s true,” I said. I recognized a certain tone in his voice that I didn’t like, as it always seemed to mean he was planning some new scheme.
“And during these great days of awe … I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard not to feel the compulsion …”
“The compulsion, Cousin?”
He hesitated. “… to immerse in a mikve.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” I said, “but.”
“Yes: but,” he agreed.
“That would be impossible,” I added, as though I were speaking to a child, to a precocious child, a brilliant child, a child with amazing gifts and talents and abilities, but a child nonetheless. “You know as well as I the mikves have all been closed. You’ve seen the signs yourself,” I reminded him.
Like pious Hasidim, l’havdil, the Germans seemed to know where every ritual bath in the city was, and with their usual conscientiousness, they’d hung a sign on each, which read OPENING THE MIKVE OR EMPLOYING IT WILL BE PUNISHED AS SABOTAGE, SUBJECT TO BETWEEN TEN YEARS IN PRISON AND DEATH.
“Strange, isn’t it? Ten years in prison, death.” The rebbe gave a little shrug with his hands.
“Yes, for a bath, yes, I suppose, it is extreme.”
He was silent for a moment; then cocking his head to the side, as if he’d only just heard me, he said, “For a bath, did you say?”
“Regretfully,” I said. “The mikve is, of course, not a bath.” Or at least not in the rebbe’s view. However, I had no interest in arguing with him over this or anything else, for that matter. Working on his book was a sufficiently draining experience. The last thing I wanted was an encyclopedic lecture on the efficacy of ritual immersion and the proper care and feeding of the Jewish soul. And the last thing I wanted after that was to go traipsing after him on a mad trip to a mikve. If he were truly my cousin, he was the only family I had, and all I wanted, really, was to sit in his home, as a visiting relative might, and wait for the war to end.
I pointed towards our manuscript. “Perhaps we should return to our work.”
“I don’t mean to be harsh, Cousin — ”
“Nor I, nor I.”
“ — but I’m afraid that here the enemy, may their name be blotted out, knows considerably more than you do.”
I put down my pen. “I’m certainly willing to concede that possibility.”
“Only ask yourself: isn’t their phraseology a tad queer?”
“Their phraseology?”
“On the warning signs, I mean. Isn’t it queer that immersing in a mikve should be considered an act of sabotage?”
“They’re merely playing with us, tormenting us. That’s all it is.”
“Yes, of course,” the rebbe said, “although I think not. For what is a mikve, my dear cousin, but the very waters of mercy! By immersing in a mikve, a man is purified, all his sins forgiven. Now don’t you see? Once our sins are forgiven, there will be no need for the Holy One to punish us further. Nor any justification for His continuing to do so.”
“Though God might forgive us,” I said, hoping to extinguish the fire I sensed stirring up in him, “I’m not so sure about the Germans.”
“Oh, please! Don’t be ridiculous! Do you really imagine our enemies could have achieved all they have — and may it soon crumble to dust! — without the aid of Heaven?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s illegal and that’s that.”
“That’s true,” the rebbe agreed, “it’s illegal.”
“And that’s that,” I said.
“Ten years in prison is no laughing matter.”
“Nor is death.”
He puffed a little on his pipe before tamping it out.
“And yet you risk it every day. With your smuggling and your …” He searched for an additional word, but could find none, and so he simply repeated “smuggling.”
“And who told you about that?”
“Who told me about that? Are you still so naïve? Everyone talks to me. And as a consequence, I know everything.”
“Whatever I’m doing — ” And here, I stopped myself, not wanting to incriminate him. “That is to say: whatever I may or may not be doing, this is an entirely different matter.”
“Is it?”
I lowered my voice and leaned in nearer to him. “If I’m smuggling items into the ghetto, and I assure you, my dear cousin, that I’m not, it’s because the children here are in need of medicine. And if occasionally I carry in arms for the underground, which I don’t, it’s only because I’ve been asked to, although of course, I haven’t been. And if I’m out there anyway, what would be the point of leaving these hypothetical weapons ownerless, when others have theoretically risked their lives to get them to me? However, there is no need for you to so pointlessly endanger yourself.”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I suppose you’re right. It’s needlessly risky, and no, you’re right, you’re right, our daily work calls to us.” He patted the manuscript affectionately. I picked up my pen and straightened my notes and prepared to read through them with him, but then he cried, “Oh, how you shame me! You risk your life to help your people merely because someone has asked you to! Well, have I not been asked? No, even further: commanded!”
“Commanded? By whom?”
“By the very voice of Heaven!” he said, his face suddenly filling with an electric glow.
“Oh dear God!”
“No, it’s clear,” he cried. “Someone must sabotage our enemies by going to the mikve!”
“Don’t be absurd!”
Finally, at last, he calmed himself and seemed to relent. “No, no, I suppose you’re right. To risk one’s life over such a trifle is …”
“Precisely.”
“Over such a small thing …”
“Exactly.”
“Over a bath, really, when you get down to it.”
“Although as you pointed out,” I conceded, hoping to further placate him, “it’s not merely a bath, but still.”
“No, that’s right, you’re correct. It’s not a trifle.”
“No.”
“Performing the will of Heaven!”
Ah, here we go! I thought.
“It’s decided, then.” The rebbe pushed his glasses onto his forehead.
“As the Day of Atonement is upon us, we must go to the mikve. Don’t try to talk me out of it, Cousin. If we risk our lives to obey God’s commandments, surely He’ll spare those lives, and in this way, we’ll bring our enemies to their knees!”
The rebbe replaced his glasses onto the bridge of his nose and, as though nothing of significance had transpired between us, we returned to our work. Whenever I stole a glance at him, however, I could see the effect his decision was having upon him. He seemed happier than he had been for days, happier perhaps than I’d ever seen him. He even hummed a little to himself, grinning from time to time inside his extravagant beard. He was like a man with a secret mistress, knowing that the time until he saw her woul
dn’t be long.
CHAPTER 7
I told myself it wasn’t up to me to talk him out of his decision. To begin with, he would never have listened to me. Who was I, after all? Only his cousin, the unbeliever. Also, the idea seemed so preposterous, I was certain one of the rebbe’s closer associates, the once well-to-do Hasidim who formed a kind of advisory board around him, would dissuade him from it. I was appalled, however, to see that even these men were helpless in this regard. Each time one of them tried to convince the rebbe to cancel the trip, the rebbe used the conversation as a way to better organize his plans.
“The rebbe can’t be serious,” I heard one of them saying. “Why, we’d have to proceed by cover of darkness.”
“Ah, by cover of darkness, you’re suggesting? Setting out at dawn, you mean?”
“No, the rebbe would have to arrive at dawn, or even earlier!”
“Of course. Excellent thinking.”
“And the idea of taking a car is sheer madness!”
“What would you suggest, then?”
“A wagon would be less conspicuous, though slower.”
“Good. Round up a wagon.”
“And you’ll never be able to convince the owner of the mikve to open it.”
“Have you tried?”
“What would be the purpose?”
“Talk to Reb Itzik, and let me know if he agrees.”
Everything had to be prepared in strictest secrecy, although this posed no problem for the rebbe. He kept a million secrets, not only those of his Hasidim, who told him everything and upon whose foreheads, I was becoming convinced, he could read the rest, but the secrets of the cosmos as well. Everything Heaven allowed a man to know, the rebbe knew, and he kept his mouth shut about most of it.
A secret rendezvous with a mikve was child’s play for a man like that.
HOWEVER, EVERYTHING WENT wrong from the start.
A small group of us gathered in the rebbe’s kitchen. We’d slept at his house, as there was no other way to be there before five, the hour when Jews were first permitted on the streets. Though I considered it folly to risk my life for a freezing bath in the bitterest days of October, I’d grown rather protective of the rebbe and had no intention of letting him out of my sight. Besides, he’d insisted I come.
A Curable Romantic Page 61
