The Department of Missing Persons

by Ruth Zylberman

  So this means my mother always takes care of her, more than she does of me, since I don’t cry, so then it makes sense that I like Sylvia a lot. She sings me songs and so what if she steals a little bread.

  The Hungarian tells me that the fever has gone, that this is good. It’s true, I’m not as dizzy, I’m no longer flying. Done being the bird. Back to being stuck on the bed frame. Exhausted, I return from a long journey.

  In warm countries there are trees that search for water so eagerly that their roots, invisible to the naked eye, extend far beneath the ground. I am also searching for water and my roots, stubborn and tenacious, spread out under the block. They twist, they tangle, they upset everything in their path, stir the earth, send pebbles flying, uproot the plants and sink down far away, deep into the soil, then into the subsoil, until they touch and penetrate the bedrock. And you should see how my roots worm their way into the bedrock, how they infiltrate, mixing with the minerals, the fossils, and how they draw off the lifeblood that’s taking the opposite path, climbing to the surface, making its way through the branches, the leaves, the waste, the dead bodies of animals, the dead bodies of men, all the way to the floor of the block, along the wooden mounts of the bed frames, and then spreading out over the misshapen body, my own, the lifeless body, my own, stretching out the hands, my own, supplying blood to the blue eyes, my own, Ovadia from Kz Bergen-Belsen, April 1944. My eyelids blink, my skin shivers, my penis stiffens, the wounds fester, organs working. Give me a little water, Hungarian, moisten my lips again, that I may look, that I may see, that I may stand up, that I may live.

  The train stops in the middle of a forest. There is a path covered in snow going through the trees. My mother tells me we need to walk, that we have to walk, that I have to walk and be brave, that she’s going to hold onto us but we must never, ever stop even if it’s long, even if it’s cold, it is impossible to stop or else we die. And the Germans are already yelling at us, we all go out into the snow, onto the path, and I feel like it’s going too fast, that I’m never going to get there. I lose one of my shoes in the snow. I cry and my mother quickly bends down and picks it up and puts it back on for me. We can’t be the last ones so she tells me to run, she carries Pesia and she pulls me by the arm. She’s pulling me, she’s hurting me. We’re in the middle of the group. The Germans aren’t speaking anymore. All of us go forward under the snow. There are birds; I hear them but most of all I hear in my head when I’m breathing and how fast my heart is beating. It’s like a fog moving around in my head that’s knocking. That’s knocking.

  I stop to hear the fog better and at the same time my mother pulls on my arm and a German hits me on the head. Not a big hit but still I almost fall down and my mother pulls me and lifts me up. I can’t even walk straight because the snow is so deep and my feet are sinking into it. Then my mother repeats my name so I keep going; she’s repeating it, she’s carrying Pesia and she’s repeating my name while she pulls my arm, Perla, Perla, Perla, Perla, Perla, Perla, Perla and on the per I put one foot forward and on the la the other one. I’m not even listening to the fog in my head anymore, just the per and the la, one foot, one foot.

  The old woman I was afraid of at the camp, the one who ate in the corner of the block without looking at anyone, has fallen in the snow. She’s not moving anymore, but I barely have enough time to see her because my mother covered my eyes and pulled me and behind us I even hear someone hitting her. The snow must be red around her.

  I’m not sure anymore how long we’ve been walking, and my mother puts her hands in the snow and makes it melt in my mouth and Pesia’s and then she puts some on my face. It’s not even cold because it’s as if I’ve become the snow, too; cold snow that doesn’t move, that doesn’t move anymore, and I don’t want to move anymore. That’s it, it’s over, even if my mother hits me, I won’t keep going, I’m going to stay in the snow that is like me, I will stay cold without moving. I stop. I don’t cry. I stop and sit down. That’s it, I’m not going anymore. But then my mother leans over me and looks at me with her white face and her brown eyes shining in the middle. She just looks at me, she doesn’t speak, she doesn’t yell, she doesn’t pull. There are just her two eyes, like liquid charcoal. She stops. She places Pesia, who is crying, next to her. Around us there are pine trees covered in white; in the snow there are the gray footprints of other people in front of us. They have left us behind. Pesia sits down in the snow. My mother sits down in the snow. A German woman comes toward us. Everything seems to be in slow motion and silent. Then I look at my mother, too, and our brown eyes meet. Everything is empty. We’re going to die here.

  Suddenly she stands up, she pulls me, she lifts me up, she takes Pesia in her arms and we run to catch up with the others. The German woman didn’t hit us.

  In a low voice, my mother says, “Almost there, almost there, don’t worry we’re almost there,” and there is her hand in mine.

  And I believe that we’re almost there because there is no more forest and at the end there is what looks like a very big field. There are wooden barracks, barbed wire, towers, and all around are piles of naked dead bodies stacked on top of each other and even though my mother abruptly puts her hand over my eyes, I see everything.

  We had arrived.

  Breathe inside, suffer outside and the breath takes over what is suffering. The words remodel themselves, one after another, putting themselves nicely into single file in the folds of my brain. The brain that breathes, suffers, thinks, sees, lives. Body inert but brain in motion, and for this I praise you my creator, my God, because by your grace the possibility of prayer has been returned to me. God above blocks and bodies, above me. God without whom nothing and no one happens, God, accompany your creations, the bodies and the blocks, stretch out your strong arm and your firm hand over your servant, lying here before you on the grass, crawling on the ground like a stinking creature on the same level as the stones and insects, on the same level as the ground out of which I draw the strength to beseech you.

  Pesia was at the soup. My mother had sent her. She wants me to go, too, but I don’t want to. I know that Pesia gets a little more soup because she’s pretty, even with the lice; everyone always says that to my mother. And then they say that she is so small. So my mother gives her the cup and she goes all by herself around the kitchen block and the women over there give her an extra ladleful in the cup. Once there was even a potato at the bottom. I know my mother would like me to go, too, but I don’t have Shirley Temple hair, I’m not pretty like Pesia, nobody would give me any extra and even if my mother yells I won’t go. And also, I know that when Pesia gets back with the cup, there is Sylvia next to us who is always watching us. She’s lying right next to us, she’s so thin but my mother says that there isn’t enough soup for four. So she looks at us, thin, thin, and we move against the wall so we can’t see her looking at us. My mother forbids us from looking at her.

  No potato today, my mother takes the cup. We take turns passing the spoon. My mother always eats less than us. The three of us sit in a circle by the wall. It’s hard not to eat it all and to give the spoon to Pesia and my mother. I force myself. I lick the spoon clean before I give it away. There is a noise behind us; Sylvia has come down from the bunk. She’s so thin, you can see the lice on her body. She comes over, looking at us. She looks at the cup. She wants the soup. She doesn’t speak, she just comes closer.

  My mother doesn’t even look at her, she keeps sucking on the spoon. Pesia has seen her. She gets up and motions the way you would to a dog, stomping her foot so Sylvia will go away. Even though she is small and very pretty, like Shirley Temple, when she moved like that, waving her hands and stomping her foot, Sylvia lowered her head and retreated like a scared animal. She climbed back onto the bunk. She continues looking at us but she no longer dares to move; she just looks at us. Pesia came and sat down again in the circle and we finished the soup. My mother didn’t even raise her head.

  After the soup, my mother did the lice. First Pesia,
then me. And then I went outside with Pesia. Normally my mother doesn’t want us to go out alone, because of all of the dead bodies in front of the block and on the pathways everywhere inside the camp. But now that we’re used to it, she doesn’t have to put her hands in front of our eyes anymore. At Ravensbrück they collected all of the dead people in one corner, but here, maybe because there are too many, there are dead people everywhere. They are all naked. Men, women, eyes open, mouths open, too. I’m not afraid at all anymore. I hide behind them with Pesia. Sometimes there are holes in the bodies with insects inside, black ants that come out in a line. Especially now that the snow has melted, now that it’s warmer. We’re even used to the smell. I know that my mother will not let us become like these dead people. Maybe Sylvia will be on one of the piles, but not us. The bodies making what look like mountains.

  God, my eyes were wide open and merging with your sky, but then I turned my head and saw them hopping between the cadavers. Repulsive, skinny, they were squatting down and looking at the holes in the bodies, enjoying watching the trajectories of ants. My two daughters, so small, were chirping. I have found them in your gehenna. God, merciful artisan of their metamorphosis into minuscule she-wolves coming to sniff the smell of death. Is it possible to open my eyes wider than I’ve opened them now, trying to absorb the curve of their movements, the momentum of their hands and their outstretched fingers that barely touch? Merciful God who has made the spectacle of death familiar to these two children born of my seed, I give you thanks. They are going to pass close to me. I braced myself, I stretched my neck, pointing my eyes over them; I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Perla went by. She glanced at me, she saw I was moving my foot. She stopped for an instant; was that pity in her eyes? Is a little girl capable of pity? Then she left. Pesia was following her and got her legs caught on my foot. She tripped, gave me a little kick on the ankle for revenge, and then ran to catch up with Perla. And also, my revered God, what does one do with a father-body, a father-cadaver?

  The Hungarian was sitting next to me. He followed them with his eyes, not knowing: those shadows had never played together in front of him on the banks of the canal du Midi, they had never hopped along the cobbled lanes of Toulouse, they had never sung the old songs of their new land for him … The Hungarian followed the bouncing little she-wolves with his eyes, and when they disappeared behind a block, he started to cry.

  Sylvia had already died. The women had placed her on the pile in front of the block and my mother told me that it was over, that the English had arrived to liberate us. There were no more Germans, no more dogs, and we saw the English soldiers coming. They were walking slowly through the middle of the camp. They were in uniform. They looked to the right, to the left, and in front of them, at us, the cadavers. I think they were afraid. And there was silence everywhere. They hardly made a sound as they moved. Just behind them a few cars were coming, but they seemed to be rolling silently. Suddenly a woman shouted, I don’t know in what language but they were not words, just a shout, and she crawled toward them. She was terrible to look at, no hair, her dress torn; her legs were no longer legs, just wires, and she fell at the feet of the first soldiers, who were afraid under their helmets. There was dust everywhere. First they didn’t move, they stayed in place like statues and she kept screaming, encircling their legs with her arms that were no longer arms. And finally one of the soldiers leaned over and picked her up but his helmet fell off and the woman fell, too.

  At that moment, I couldn’t see anything because all of the women who could still walk, screaming and crying, started heading for the soldiers who were surrounded, swallowed up by all the women. My mother brought us with her. She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t screaming. She forced her way through the group of women and one of the soldiers—we could barely see his face under his helmet—took bread and sugar out of his pockets to give to us, and even though he was smiling, we could see he was afraid of us, despite the fact that next to him we looked like little mice. Quickly, Pesia and I ate the bread and the sugar.

  The Hungarian shakes me and I open my eyes. They’re here, they’re here.

  Helmets, handkerchiefs over the face because of how bad we smelled.

  They walk between the rows, looking at us, leaning over, speaking in English to each other.

  They murmur quarantine, typhus.

  Men lying down reach out their arms to them, smiling at them, and it’s even worse when they smile with their deprived mouths. They no longer have faces, they are figurines, pieces of wood without teeth, but they still want to smile, they think they can still smile.

  A man stops in front of me. I turn my head, lift my eyes, and I see him, my liberator. My eyes in his, the piece of wood looking at him. What will you say, soldier, when you return home, to your house where things remained things, animals animals, men men? Tell me, what will you say? About me, about the piece of wood with light eyes who is looking at you because you are my liberator, the one I’ve been waiting for, the charming soldier who is waking me up from the sleep of death.

  He squats down next to me. He has a paper in his hand, he’s writing.

  Your name? Your name? Can you tell me your name?

  My name, charming soldier, the name of the piece of wood, Ovadia, Ovadia Stern, son of Emanuel.

  English soldier from the untouched lands of Dorset, charming soldier, make yourself God at my bedside and please, in large letters, write my name in the great book of life.

  The people they put here in this room are those they have condemned to life, the ones who will come back. And I am among them.

  I was intoxicated by the taste of the water, the texture of the bread in my mouth, gray dough, soft dough, manna from this new desert where each grain of sand is a dislocated body, because I also know—the English don’t want to see it anymore, they’ve already seen too much—that behind the wall there are the piles, and in the piles is the Hungarian.

  And God said to the Hungarian, “Hungarian, thou shalt not go over this Jordan.”

  Hey! Hungarian! I yell his name from the white bed. In spite of your strong hand and your powerful arm, you’re lying in the pile.

  What’s your name? Votre nom?

  Still the lists. Selection, pile, living.

  Blue eyes, alive, son of Emanuel Stern, human body, Ovadia Stern.

  The English want to save me. The doctor, the nurse, the uniforms and the light-colored blouses. They arrange the pillow, pull up the sheets, take turns pouring me water and giving me the manna of salvation. Little cachectic Hebrew man with bones poking out under his transparent skin, Hebrew man from the eradicated tribe who knows the price of survival.

  Light eyes, parsimonious breathing, the Hungarian in the pile, and near me I saw my daughters transformed into minuscule she-wolves with sickly looking fur and crazy eyes, zigzagging between the bodies, hitting the bodies, mocking the bodies, outliving the bodies.

  What will there be in Canaan?

  That glorious country of after-the-war, after-the-Hungarian, after-the-piles.

  To be removed completely from piles, blocks, deaths; to ingest, alive, water and manna; to push roots deep into the ground, irrigate the cachectic body, the piercing bones, the blue gaze that already is no longer fixed on anything, not the shadows in the white room, not the bowl of water or the one filled with manna; empty the cachectic body in brown and stinking waves, shit in the white bed.

  The water and manna escape, probably, the open eyes of the Hungarian in the pile.

  What would it cost to keep the water and the manna on the inside, to stick them to my bones, my joints, my flesh? Too late, broken shoring, the eyes that saw too much are sweeping the ceiling, no longer recognizing anything, the attentiveness of the doctor, the nurse, my hand taken in another hand, my palm squeezed by another palm.

  This is how it finished and how the hills of Canaan disappeared.

  And in that bed, with my dislocated body and wandering eyes, tell me, my God, am I made in your image? Am I t
he one who follows?

  And God says to me, I hear him in my ear: “Lift up thine eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and behold it with thine eyes; for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.”*

  Am I the one who is? Will I always be the one who was?

  The missing one who will lift up his eyes westward, northward, southward, and eastward and who will behold it with his eyes.

  He’s dead. What was his name?

  Sylvia’s dead! I shout. Her father hadn’t reached us yet but I had recognized him; even though he was thin and wearing his striped outfit, I had recognized him: he was with us at the casern in Cafarelli and afterward in the train car. I remembered how Sylvia slept in his arms and how she had cried when he got out before and she found herself all alone in the middle of all of us. I ran toward him; he was still walking. There were fewer piles in the camp, there was sunshine and I was outside with Pesia; the two of us were playing. I saw him, I stood up, I ran and stopped right in front of him and yelled, “Sylvia’s dead!” Then I smiled to tell him hello.

  He stopped; he was very thin and very tall. I raised my head toward him and I could no longer see him very well because of the spots of sun over his face.

  He looked at me without speaking and his eyes frightened me. But what could he do to me? I was a child.

  Pesia arrived behind me; she looked at him, too, lifting her neck. She was so small and he was so tall.

  Slowly he turned toward the sun and left for the woods. It seemed like he was going to collapse.

  It was true, though, that Sylvia was dead.

  We went back to the block and huddled together with my mother against the wall in the back on the right.

  I put the blanket that one of the Englishmen had given me over my hair.