by Steven Uhly
On the train to Antwerp he fell asleep. Why Antwerp? he had asked his mother when the suggestion was made. Lisa’s got friends who’ve got friends there, they won’t be around and you can use their apartment, was her answer, It’s big, there’s room for everybody. She had wanted to come with them, but Shimon had threatened not to go, so she abandoned the plan.
Lana read a book. From time to time she looked out of the train window, So close to Germany, she was sad that they could not go there, to the land of criminals, the land of their ancestors, What’s it like, she had once asked her mother, when you’re the only survivor? Her mother had stared at Lana, searching for words that would be appropriate and not sound too harsh, then she had said, There’s a lot of responsibility, too much sometimes. At the time Lana did not understand, but now, by her brother’s side, someone still preoccupied by survival, she got an inkling of it.
“What are you reading?”
She was jolted from her thoughts. Shimon had woken up and was blinking at her. She showed him. A red cover. The Avengers. Written in large, black letters. Between the definite article and the noun sat a small swastika, clamped like a nut in a nutcracker.
“Mama gave it to me,” Lana said.
“What’s it about?”
“The Jewish Brigade in the British Army. After the war some of them hunted down Nazis and killed them.”
“Peretz talked about them.”
“Exactly, he was part of the brigade, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with the killing.”
“That’s what he says today.”
“I believe him. He’s not a liar.”
“No.”
Lana put an end to the conversation by continuing to read. Shimon looked out of the window, it was already nine in the evening, but the sun was still in the sky. The countryside awakened vague memories, so much green, wherever you looked something was growing. Half-timbered houses, small villages that looked as if they had risen from the earth. Somewhere inside him a string had been touched, and all of a sudden he could remember a feeling on which a picture hung, through the picture flowed a wide river, above the river was a pontoon bridge and he, he had wanted to leap into it and be dragged out to the wide open sea.
163
Tom’s eyes were out on stalks when he stepped onto platform 3 of Zoologischer Gartenstation, holding his great-grandmother’s hand. Before him stood a black steam locomotive of the German Reichsbahn. Thick, gray smoke billowed from its mighty funnel. The driver of the locomotive, standing up in the cabin, laughed when he saw Tom, who had stopped agape by the monster. He pulled at a cord by his head and the engine gave a loud, high-pitched too-oo-oo-oot. Then, by way of a greeting to Tom, he put two fingers on his peaked cap and snapped his wrist forward.
Frau Kramer pulled her great-grandson to one of the carriages where Lisa was waiting with the luggage. They climbed on and looked for a free compartment. Tom sat by the window and peered out, Frau Kramer sat beside him, with Lisa in the window seat opposite.
The train started up with a jerk and slowly pulled out of the station. After a quarter of an hour they were passing barbed-wire fences and watchtowers, then the train stopped again. The station sign read, “Berlin-Staaken.” It was only a brief stop, doors were opened and crunched closed again. The train moved on. After a few minutes two men in the pale-green uniform of the G.D.R. border police opened the door to the compartment and said, Good Morning, passports please! The women gave them three passports, the men inspected these thoroughly, then returned the documents and closed the door.
Lisa looked at her son sitting excitedly opposite her, commenting on everything he saw outside. The women gave each other the occasional smile, like accomplices. Tom was unaware that he was the reason for this. He had never undertaken such a long journey before. And at the end of it his father was waiting for him with lots of presents.
When, an hour later, the train passed through a village, Tom asked his mother to read the station sign. Lisa had to concentrate very hard to catch the sign as it rushed past, but she managed it.
“Nauen,” she said, smiling to her son. Tom repeated the word thoughtfully, then quickly forgot it again. The village itself, old houses, a small pretty station, flew past, remaining where it was amongst fields and trees.
When the train stopped in Schwanheide, Tobias was waiting on the platform. They embraced, Herr Weiss tried to carry all their luggage for them, but had to leave one suitcase to Lisa. Holding Tom’s hand, Frau Kramer followed the two of them to the car park. She glanced behind her. She recalled this station very well, and for an instant a feeling crashed through her like a heavy weight, a sorrow, faces, names. Then she drew herself up, left the moment behind her and walked with Tom out of the small station.
“Over there!” the boy cried, thrusting out his arm. He had spied his mother and Herr Weiss amongst the row of parked cars. They were standing by the open boot of a white Volvo, waving at them.
Tom was allowed to sit in the front. Herr Weiss put a thick, square piece of hard foam under his bottom so he was high enough and plugged in his belt.
They set off. As he drove, Herr Weiss explained to Tom that they would drive across the Hansa line and onto the Flemish Road, that this road got its name because it went to Flanders, and that nobody could remember when it was actually built.
Lisa and Frau Kramer sat in the back. Placing her hand on her grandmother’s forearm, Lisa said, “Are you alright?”
The old woman sighed and said, “Don’t worry about me. I’m just old, I’ll be dead soon, that’s all.”
“Grandma! What are you talking about?”
Frau Kramer shrugged and looked out of the window. Lisa watched her for a while, and then said, “When?”
Frau Kramer turned to her and smiled. “Oh, it’ll be a while yet, my love, don’t you worry.”
“You shouldn’t have come with us.”
“But of course I should! I’ve got to see Shimon again. And I want to meet his sister. And I want to see father and son together. And I’ve got to know if you’re alright.”
“Oh, Grandma.” Lisa rested her head on Frau Kramer’s shoulder, but only briefly, because she was worried that the weight of it would be too much of a strain for her. It was perfect weather for a car journey, not too warm, a choppy wind swept white clouds across the sky from the west, Lisa felt as if they were heading to where the clouds were coming from, as if the clouds themselves were passengers and they would meet and rush past each other, without saying a word and without either party understanding what was driving the other, what was pulling them.
After three hours they reached the Netherlands. The German border guards waved the cars through, but a queue had formed on the Dutch side, the officers were checking every vehicle.
On the other side of the border they turned off the highway and stopped in Emmen. Tom feted everything he had never seen before as a major discovery, number plates, streetlamps, makes of car. They parked in the town center, which seemed to consist of nothing but new houses and building sites. The houses were built from the same red bricks as in Lübeck, but here they were flat and cube-like rather than tall and narrow.
They found a restaurant and sat at a table on the terrace beneath a large umbrella. A waiter came over, a young man in civvies, checked shirt, blue jeans, shoulder-length hair, and without a word gave them three menus.
It was nine o’clock in the evening by the time they arrived in Antwerp. The sun stood low in the west, it would soon set. Tom had fallen asleep, Lisa had brought him into the back so he could lie down, Frau Kramer dozed in the front. Herr Weiss fought off tiredness. Lisa was wide awake.
Antwerp old town was full of winding streets, but the directions Lisa had been given by Mosche and Selma took them unerringly to their destination. It was still a while before they parked in a narrow street between palatial houses from times past, and a tall man stepped out of the darkness and opened the rear door of the Volvo because he had seen Lisa.
164
Shimon opened the door. Lisa’s face met him from the dim light of the car. Lisa’s eyes. Lisa’s mouth. Without thinking he bent and kissed her, there was no barrier, no unfamiliarity, no resentment, the present flushed all that away. Both knew that everything would come back, but for the moment that did not matter.
When Shimon saw Tom, his head in his mother’s lap, he said, “I’ll do it.”
He walked around the car, opened the other door and carefully lifted up his son, feeling for the very first time the weight of his child, carried him into the house and up a narrow, steep staircase to the bed that had been prepared for him. He laid him down, took the shoes off his little feet, the socks, took off his trousers, covered him up. He sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at him. After a while he said, “Hello, Tom, I’m your father.”
He sobbed and his own tears took him by surprise. He got up, left the room, closed the door quietly and a feeling surged in him that he had never felt before. He wanted to be there for this child always, protect him from any dangers, he was struck by the question of how he could have left him alone for so long, in the land of criminals, and he resolved to talk this through with Lisa as soon as possible. He needed a cigarette. Lisa had got out of the car to help her grandmother. Tobias saw to the luggage in the boot. Lana Sarfati came out of the house to greet them. When Frau Kramer saw her she cried out in astonishment, “My God! You look just like your mother!”
Lana laughed brightly and embraced the old woman.
165
“What went wrong back then?”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“You say that lightly, but I’m not so sure.”
“I was a drug addict, it couldn’t end well.”
“But I knew that and got involved with you all the same.”
“You just thought I was great.”
“Do you think the two things are completely separate?”
“Yes. You don’t, then?”
“No, I think everything is linked to everything else. Look at us. Both on the run since we were small, both orphaned, both looking for something to give us security.”
“But I’m the addict.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been lied to. You’re still being lied to.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Silence.
“Oh, nothing.”
“I want to know what you meant by that.”
“Let your mother tell you, please don’t force me to!”
“My mother told you and not me?”
“She was worried about you.”
“Worried about me, and that’s why she’s still lying to me? I want you to tell me right now, right now, or I’m going back.”
“What about Tom? Didn’t you come because of him, too?”
“Don’t change the subject! You know something about me that I don’t know.”
“It’s not about you, Shimon, it’s . . . just something about your parents, and I’m very sorry I know, I didn’t ask to know, your mother told me on the day I saw her again in Tel Aviv. I’d actually come for a very different reason, but then . . .”
Silence.
“Tell me.”
“But please don’t be angry, you’ve got to understand her. She was just frightened.”
“Tell me.”
Silence.
“O.K., then.”
Silence.
“Your mother told you that your father was a German and that he’s dead, right?”
“Yes. Isn’t that the truth?”
“It is. But she didn’t love him. He raped her. Him and four other S.S. men. She doesn’t know which of them is your father.”
Silence.
Shimon does not move. All of a sudden he is lying as if paralyzed in bed, Lisa’s entire body is wrapped around him, skin on skin, he has taken it in, he knows what it ought to mean, but he cannot feel it. He cannot feel anything. He thinks he now needs something stronger than a cigarette.
“I’m sorry, my love,” Lisa whispers into his ear, “I . . . I couldn’t go on pretending that I didn’t know. Forgive me.” Lisa cries the tears that Shimon cannot shed, Shimon has taken it in, he knows what it means, he knows what he should be feeling, but it does not happen. Nothing happens. Tranquility infuses him.
Lisa says, “It’s got nothing to do with you, Shimon, please listen to what I’m saying! You are you, you’re not what happened between your parents.”
Shimon says, “But you said everything’s linked to everything else.”
“But not in that way. Shimon, please!” She turns his head toward her. In the dim light of the streetlamp he looks exactly as he did six years earlier in her bed in Anna’s house. This time he is not asleep and not drunk, but with a pain in her chest Lisa feels as if he is not there. She holds his head in her hands, he looks at her, he recognizes her, he knows that he loves her. But he cannot feel it.
She says, “You have a son. If you can’t fight for me and you can’t fight for yourself, then at least fight for him.”
Shimon looks past Lisa to where Tom is lying asleep in his little bed, with no idea how close his stranger-father is. If he leaves now, Lisa can tell the boy that there was a problem, the airplane broke down, he fell ill, something. Shimon Sarfati. His initials in the Latin alphabet. They appear to him as a hidden clue, always visible, there, right before his eyes his whole life long. All of a sudden being a father seems like a prison, How can someone in free fall hold on to a child? She should have taken care, she really ought to have taken care! Slowly he frees himself from Lisa’s grasp, he has forgotten what she means, now she is merely shackling him, he ignores her pleas, her tears fail to move him. Deep within himself he hears an appalled voice insisting that he is about to do something dreadful, unforgivable. But to him it sounds like the voice of an anxious little boy.
Lisa has no intention of making a scene, she does not want to wake Tom, she stays in bed, crying as silently as she can. Shimon puts on his clothes slowly, methodically. When he is dressed he leaves the room without a word. He takes nothing but his wallet and passport, Lana will have to deal with the luggage. He just wants to go, to get out.
166
When Tom woke the following morning, Lisa pulled herself together. She had barely slept a wink, but she said Happy Birthday to her son, she sang him a song, disguising the tears she was shedding with a smile. She gave him the presents she had brought from Berlin, she unwrapped the cake she had baked in Berlin and stuck into it five colorful candles she had bought in Berlin. She lit them and Tom blew them out. He showed no interest in the unfamiliar suitcase in the corner. When he asked about his father, Lisa lied to him. She said he was unable to come because he was very sick.
“But Auntie Lana has come, do you want to meet her?”
Tom did not want to, he thought of his friends at kindergarten that he had swapped for his father, and now his father was not here.
“Couldn’t he have told us earlier?”
Shaking her head, Lisa said, “Sometimes these things come on very suddenly.” She took several deep breaths until she felt sufficiently composed, then said, “Look, Uncle Tobi’s here, Great-Grandma’s here, Auntie Lana’s here and I’m here—so many people and they’ve all brought you something!”
“But no children, no friends.”
It took Tom a while to accept the situation. Then he played with his present, a small wooden fort with cowboys, Indians and horses, the gate could be opened and closed, there were lookout towers and even a cannon.
Lisa left the room to alert the others, she lied, she talked of an argument, she begged them to back up her story of an illness. Lana was confounded and worried. She had been prepared for everything apart from the possibility that Shimon might vanish in the middle of the night. Frau Kramer could see that Lisa had not told them everything, she felt her granddaughter’s pain as if it were her own, but she brushed it aside and said, “Maybe he’ll come back.”
“Yes,” Lisa said
meekly, “maybe.”
Everyone knew what to do. They went to Lisa’s bedroom with the presents they had brought. They sang for Tom, who watched them, they smiled as joyfully as they could, this day was going to be hard work.
For Tom it turned out to be an acceptable birthday. He got to make all the decisions, he was allowed to eat as many sweets as he wanted. When, over breakfast, he announced he wanted to go swimming, they drove another hundred kilometers to the west, to the beach at Blankenberge. Tom was the center of the world and the four adults orbited around him tirelessly like satellites. Secretly there were other orbits, other centers and other feelings. When they returned to the house in Antwerp, for a moment Lisa was as alert as she had been the evening before, for a moment just the repetition seemed to offer her a second chance, for a moment she expected Shimon to open the door again and kiss her.
But no. The apartment was deserted, Shimon’s case was exactly where it had been that morning. The place where he had been lying in bed next to her was empty.
Before Tom went to sleep he asked his mother, “Will Papa get better?”
“He certainly will,” Lisa said softly.
Tom smiled blearily. “Great, then he can come and visit us at home next time.” He fell asleep.
Without undressing Lisa fell onto the bed. She tried to give up hope, but she was too tired. Sleep overcame her even before she could get under the covers.
167
He had wandered around Antwerp without success. Someone had told him, You need to go to the Netherlands for that. He had made his way to the station and taken the first train to Amsterdam. He slept during the journey, but ate nothing. He chain-smoked. His stomach was empty and it ached. It was nippy, he was only wearing a thin jacket over his shirt and he froze. Lisa’s words, her pleas, her despair, her body. Tom, lying unsuspectingly beside them, asleep in his little bed. Shimon wanted it all to disappear from his mind and was looking for something that might help with that. He wandered along the canals, the shops were not yet open, the city with its narrow streets, its little old brick houses stood there damp and sedate. He went back to the station, bought himself a snack, which he ate without tasting, just to keep his body alive, like filling up a car to get you to your destination. He loitered around the station in the hope of finding someone who could sell him something, but police were patrolling the empty concourse. Later he found a pale-looking boy hanging around the Dam, who told him he should go to Zeedijk. Shimon asked the way and walked to a narrow, winding street lined with low houses. There were shops here, bars, nightclubs, but he had to wait for dusk before the dealers emerged.
