The Department of Missing Persons

by Ruth Zylberman

  These levels were not antagonistic toward one another; on the contrary, they harmonized with each other, each one extending. The swallowed ruins, hardly disturbed by the aquatic life, vibrated as we passed over them and we felt both their deterioration and their persistence under our feet. It was a joyous peace unlike any I had ever known.

  But it didn’t last. The guide was already racing through the list of rafting champions who, each year, achieved the precious alliance between risk and relaxation that is at the core of French natural heritage.

  The children went back to their race, the adults to their chatting.

  The little one climbed into my lap.

  She looked at me with a determined look in her big brown eyes. She stroked my hair and took my hand. She was so slight; she was just learning how to read.

  “Tell me exactly what happened to your mother during the war.” I didn’t know if it was a question or an encouragement. I saw the water and trees go by. I would have liked to make a detour, to remain protected in the heart of the valley, the refuge of sloping hills; I avoided her gaze. Did the curse really have to be reproduced and emerge again in the middle of summer, the most deceptive of landscapes?

  But she wouldn’t let me out of anything, not even the smallest detail. She had chosen the moment and she wasn’t going to let it go.

  Who arrested Perla?

  What was it like in a concentration camp?

  How long is the trip?

  What does that mean exactly, a concentration camp?

  How do you get lice?

  How do you remove them?

  What is there to eat?

  Where are the dead people buried?

  Did children die in the camps, too?

  Why did they want children to die? She stopped and drove her eyes even deeper into mine, as if she had suddenly tasted the bitter fruit of knowledge.

  Then her face lit up. She burst into laughter and pointed to a group of children behind my back who were mimicking animals and releasing ferocious cries. Suddenly she left to join them, meowing. Her movements were so sweeping, and the looks she threw me every so often were so exaggeratedly radiant, overemphasizing her confidence and joy, that I knew perfectly well—hadn’t I done the same?—that they were intended to make me feel better, to convince me there was nothing here except this landscape lit by the August sun, to which we belonged just as much as the meandering river and the veiny tree trunks.

  So I smiled at her tenderly because, and this was probably the most important thing, I needed to welcome her outpouring of reassurance. And I realized that in the future I would need to filter the fear and make it livable for her—the fear of the empty sky above us, the fear, too, of the bubbling and invisible matter moving beneath the surface of the rivers—just as my mother had once done for me.

  This is what I suddenly remembered that night as I was entering the cold dark water.

  The commitment I had made that summer day on the Dordogne; there was no way of getting out of it.

  And it was the feeling of the little one’s weight on my lap—the vision of her body leaning over the railing, watching for the bodies that might rise to the surface—that brought me back, shivering, coughing, and numb, onto the riverbank strewn with stones.

  Io non mori’ e non rimasi vivo. Neither did I die, nor did I remain alive.

  EPILOGUE

  Ventriloquisms

  IO NON MORI’ E non rimasi vivo.

  Between death and life, between the two riverbanks, I was keeping myself in the middle.

  The beams from the stone I had dug up in Warsaw and that now lay facing me, abandoned on a shelf in the library, could still reach me.

  The stone was shining.

  It was speaking.

  Shamanic ventriloquism is a true gift.

  No need for invocation.

  Go, listen well, on the inside. The voices are there, in the folds.

  Dragged outside, on the ground, impossible to walk, the Hungarian has soaked the bread in water, ripping off pieces, rubbing my lips. I lick the water, I swallow the bread. Not much longer, I hear him say. Everywhere, bodies, my legs stretched out in front of the block, I feel the earth under my back, my eyes point upward. The empty sky. Move my hand. First the finger, the other again, the earth, my nails. In my neck, a vein beating, tchong tchong. I hear tchong tchong, I feel it. It’s beating, keeping me company. My finger, my hand, rocky earth. Warm sun face.

  Shhhhhhhh the clouds. Finger ground stones dirt black fingers.

  Back, ground, dirt, back mass inside weight against dirt—pain.

  Clouds walking.

  Maman Maman Maman I shout. It is dark and everything has turned white. She pulls my hand, quick quick quick outside. We jump up. She has Pesia’s hand, too. QUICK QUICK QUICK. She yells. She is holding Pesia’s hand. Quickly we climb down. Father, the train stopped before and he had already gotten off. Quick, quick, she says, Maman, and the soldiers are yelling too and I tangle up my feet and fall down but my mother pulled me, Pesia is crying and I hold on. We have to get in line like at school. Everyone is yelling and I get lost among all of the shadows and let go of my mother’s hand. I turn, I can’t find her. I’m crying but there is Sylvia, the one who was with us in Cafarelli, who is yelling at me and pulls on my arm and who brings me to my mother. And my mother is yelling too, Pesia is still crying. We have to move forward, the soldiers with the dogs are looking at us. There are female soldiers, too. I want to go to sleep, I’m hungry.

  And I’m going to be scared, I’m going to be scared. Maman. I run behind her. She has taken Pesia in her arms. There are lots of trees and behind the trees there is water; it’s round. The German lady hit Mme. Allouche on the back. Everyone left their suitcases behind.

  “Quickly! Quickly!” The Germans are shouting in German. Everyone is bumping into each other. I’m out of breath, everything is going too fast, my mother is in front with Pesia, I’m afraid of losing her. I run. There are buildings. I hit a rock. It hurts. Pesia is crying in my mother’s arms. It looks like we’re going inside a fortress. There are walls, trees behind the walls, and in the middle there is an area with lots of long wooden houses. We run and run, one of the female soldiers yells in German, we go in. It’s dark inside. There are beds placed on top of each other, a lot of beds. I can’t see very well; people like skeletons without hair lift their heads, watching us pass. It smells bad like in the train car, I think I’m going to throw up. I don’t throw up and my mother stops below one of the beds. We have to climb onto the bunk above her. She lifts Pesia onto it, picks me up, and puts me on it, too. There are cries everywhere. On the bed there is already a very thin woman with no hair. Her face is horrible. She looks at Pesia and me and closes her eyes. My mother climbs up and lies down. The three of us huddle together. I’m next to Pesia and the woman-skeleton. I ask my mother to go in between Pesia and me, it’s not fair otherwise. I squeeze my mother but there is that woman next to me who smells so bad. I close my eyes. I itch everywhere. And then I’m cold.

  The Hungarian next to me is repeating, he’s repeating, “Soon, it’s the end.” The end? Of what? My end is here, stretched out with my back against the ground, tchong, tssssss, my eyes to the right, to the left, I’m looking at the end. To the left is the Hungarian’s face. His eyes wide open, slitted, blue, skeleton head. The cuts on his skull, just next to me, are red and running. He’s whispering in German—hear nothing, all of the noises rattling—orders, languages—French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Czech, Dutch—and people yelling, yelling while they walk, yelling while they eat, yelling as they fall down on the ground next to me. No more kommandos, no more work, disorder—which rots everything—bodies stacked in hills, in mountains. Soon mine for the piles. Prague, Prague, Prague, summer, office paper, official, American Express, Gare Wilson, departing trains, and in the heat the dark vaulted passage from Malostranské Námĕstí to Triszte Ulice—beat, beat, the blood in my veins—close, close your eyes—turn, turn your head … ano,
tak, ya, yo, oui, tady, ici, the body driven into the ground, anotakyayoouitadyici, tchong, tchong, bat, bat … ya rozumim ano tak, los, los, los, los.

  Can’t go there anymore, done going there, just dig your fingers into the ground, listen to the groaning cries, terrors. Tchong, tchong, bat, bat, bat …

  The Hungarian yelled, “Ovadia,” “I’m Ovadia.” He picks me up, brings me into the block, and lays me down inside.

  In the morning is the roll call on the Appelplatz, farther down than the block. The roll call is awful; you have to stay straight, straight, straight, up, up, for hours. The female soldiers pass, pass again, they count. There are kapos with them on every block. I’d like to sit down, I can’t feel my legs anymore, my mother should let me sit down but she never wants to, she gives me a smack if I move. We’re supposed to stay standing like this in the wind, in the cold. It’s dark, it’s morning. I try to close my eyes to sleep even though I’m standing up but the wind is too strong and I’m too cold. It climbs up along my legs, it freezes little by little and finally I become the cold. On the inside, on the outside, I am the cold, I am ice. An ice cube with eyes closed and even with my eyes closed I cry because it’s just too hard and my mother hits me if I make a move and I know she’s scared, that she doesn’t want something to happen to me, but it’s just too hard, too hard to stay like that and there are so many people, all the women with their horrible dresses. Maybe nobody would see me if I just rested for five minutes, just five minutes I promise, I promise my mother just five minutes, it’s just too hard. My mother smacks me on the hand and pulls me up by my hair so I’m standing up again. She’s scared and the commandant is passing with his very clean boots. I’m scared, I’m not even thinking about sitting down anymore, Pesia starts to cry, what an idiot, she’s scared of the commandant, too. The commandant stops, says something in German to my mother, she says yes. She’s scared. He looks at us, he looks at Pesia, who’s crying. The other women look at us; there are so many of them, I’m ashamed and I’m scared. I shove Pesia the crying idiot. If my mother gets herself killed by the commandant it will be this idiot’s fault and we’ll be all alone here and then what are we going to do? We’ll get down on the ground and die like the women from Revier. They’re horrible. The kapos call them choumkchtuk, the choumkchtuk, the bijoux, to make fun of them. We will be choumkchtuk and we will never see Father, Toulouse, or the schoolteacher ever again. That will be the end.

  The commandant went by, the female soldiers push us and it’s the end of roll call: all of these women leaving and running into each other scares me. I’m always afraid of losing my mother. I take her hand. The others leave for work, we go back to the block. Maybe there will be some grass to pull up, little things to eat. I’m hungry. But the kapo tells us to follow her. My mother holds both of us by the hand and now there is a female soldier yelling at us. Pesia starts crying again and we have to follow the woman toward the stone buildings. She walks quickly, we run behind her and my mother caresses us at the same time. She tells me, smiling, not to be afraid, it’ll be fine, she says. The soldier hits her with her baton like when we were arrested in Toulouse and my mother had knelt down screaming in front of the man in black and he had hit her with a baton and kicked her and finally we had gone downstairs and the concierge was looking at us, crying, and they had put us into that car that was black like the man’s coat and we had all ended up at the Cafarelli casern with so many other people, and even then there wasn’t a lot to eat and everyone was crying but in the end it was nothing compared to now, when it’s so cold and we have to run behind this woman who also hits my mother. We go into the building and into a hallway. It’s warm and the woman knocks on a door that opens: it’s the commandant who has made us come into a big office that is quite warm and very beautiful. All three of us have our heads lowered, my mother answers in German and I’m ashamed because I know we smell bad since we can’t wash and because I know there are lice on my head even if my mother removes them all day long; it’s not her fault, but there are some and they might fall onto this rug and into the magnificent office of the commandant. I should tell him that, before, we used to bathe every day, we were very clean, but now we’re here. It’s not our fault and also it’s so cold that even when my mother wants to wash me sometimes with a little water I cry and scream, the cold hurts, so she lifts my arm, pulls my hair and washes me anyway. She gets that hard look on her that is so frightening. Here, my mother doesn’t have her hard look, she keeps her head lowered in her dirty dress, and all three of us have our heads lowered before the very handsome commandant and his boots which are also very beautiful. He has stopped speaking. He goes toward his desk, I watch him with my head lowered but I can still see him opening a drawer. What will I do with Pesia if he kills my mother and we become choumkchtuk? Bijoux? He comes over to us, he strokes Pesia’s hair; she’s so pretty, she looks just like Shirley Temple. He strokes her curls, he’s not afraid of lice, and he gives my mother a rectangle wrapped in paper and she tells him “thank you” in German. She still has her head lowered and we walk out. My mother opens it. It’s chocolate. She gives us some and she has some, too. It’s good, it’s good, it’s good, and it warms me up and I let it melt in my mouth and I munch and munch on it and my mother starts to cry. Why is she crying if we got chocolate? It’s the first time I’ve seen her cry.

  My mother gives us some more chocolate and hides it. We go back to the block with the soldier who is yelling less than when we went and there is almost nobody there. All of the other women are at work in the kommandos. We stay inside and my mother carefully hides the chocolate. She tells us not to say anything to anyone, she pinches my finger so I don’t tell anyone, not even Mme. Allouche or Sylvia because Sylvia might eat the whole thing and we have to be able to hold onto it or else we’re going to die. “Do you understand?” she says to me, and I say yes. We climb back onto the coya and my mother searches us for lice.

  The Hungarian gave me some more water. He’s holding my head like a mother, making me drink in small mouthfuls. Aylulu, my mother would say to me, and I understood. I fell asleep but the Hungarian is speaking his language, which I can’t understand at all. The Hungarian has blue slitted eyes; he doesn’t have a lot of teeth, he is ghastly looking but he makes me drink water in small mouthfuls and that calms me down. My body comes back into my body, I blink my blue eyes into his blue eyes to make him understand that this water and these small mouthfuls calm me down and he smiles at me, like a mother, this Hungarian. He lies down on the bed frame next to me and turns over onto his other side to sleep. He manages to sleep despite my odor, my stinking edemas, the stinking shit all along my legs. The Hungarian is kind, like a mother.

  I dream, I’m feverish, I babble incoherently, I fly above the bed frames, above the block, I take flight as skillfully as a bird, no more edemas, no more shit, only soft feathers waving, brushed by the wind. Down below people are aiming guns and setting up their shots, but who can catch me in the middle of the sky? I have keen eyes, supple feathers, and I split the air the way I learned to as a fledgling, like my bird father did before me. To escape the shouldered rifles I fly, I slide, I scoff. Acrobatics between the sky and trees. I jump the borders in the old way, the demarcation line, occupied zone, southern zone, passports, money, and no secrets for me, well-hidden, the great distributor, no one would have believed that the model employee would become a resistance smuggler. I calmed my fears as I entered the station, my face imperturbable, my trembling hands hidden in my overcoat, my impenetrable blue eyes. Greet people civilly in silence, sit down, cross my legs and watch over the folds in my pants. Out the window are fields, villages, forests.

  Your land, Ovadia, your land, your valleys, your hills, the gentleness of their progression, the homes sheltered by oak trees, the houses in the villages stuck next to each other, compacted like an insect’s outer shell. And most importantly, don’t speak. The accent, the slight accent that would betray you. Silently hand them your papers, silently smile, silently look
out the window until you dissolve into the landscape of your new land, the one of your daughters and the children of their children. France.

  We’re leaving, we don’t know where we’re going. Quickly, quickly. Get out of the block. We run with the Allouches and Sylvia. Maman is in front with Pesia. It’s snowing. They make us climb into the train cars. We’re stuck, the snow is melting. We rush into line. They’re throwing bread. Everyone is fighting each other. Maman has caught a piece but her shirt is ripped. She splits it into six pieces. Two medium pieces for Pesia and me, a small one for her. The three others are for tonight, we’re not allowed to touch them. She sits on top of them so no one takes them. She says that Sylvia steals. I don’t know why she says this, I think Sylvia is nice. She makes me laugh, she sings me songs and especially my favorite one, La Petite Hirondelle. In school when we sang it in the yard, we’d get into two rows facing each other, hold our hands in a bridge, and each take a turn going under the bridge, and the swallow who had stolen the three bags of wheat would get three taps with the stick but nobody ever tapped hard so that the girls wouldn’t get hurt. Here, the German women always have clubs and they hit, they hit even when women fall on the ground and the snow turns red with their blood. It makes me feel better to think about the song when we only pretended to hit so that people didn’t get hurt.

  Everyone is speaking at the same time; there are a lot of French women. Everyone is wondering where we’re going. Some French women say that they’re bringing us to another part of Germany because the Russians will be here soon. Others are saying we’re going to be killed, others that we’re going to be liberated. I don’t want them to kill us because I’m so afraid of being cold like that, lying in the snow, and of everything around being red with blood. I say this to Maman, but she tells me not to listen. She covers my ears so I can’t hear but that does nothing, I can still hear. I don’t even cry. Not like Pesia who always has something wrong with her, she’s hungry or cold or hurting, and who cries all the time because she’s hungry or cold or hurting and it’s true that she’s little but still.