Cafe Scheherazade

by Arnold Zable

  The flame in the hearth flickers,

  The sap on the pine flows like tears.

  The accordion is singing to me

  The song of the smile in your eyes.

  You are far from me, so very far;

  Between us stretch forests and fields,

  Between us the distance is vast.

  Yet, death is so very near.

  Sing, my accordion,

  Sing and defy the wind,

  My twisted fate please unravel

  And its meaning, I beg you, make clear.

  Even as Avram listened to this most loved of Russian partisan songs, even as he looked about him and saw the tears in his comrades’ eyes, and heard the hissing of the dying flames; even then, a future battle line was being drawn; between love and rage; between the desire to receive a lover's warmth, and the impulse to recoil; between a belief in life and a loss of faith. It was to become his greatest struggle, and it would truly begin only when the fighting was fully done.

  In the first week of July 1944, Radio Moscow echoed in the Rudnicki swamps with orders from central command: abandon the forests! Pursue the retreating enemy! Join the Red Army advance!

  The partisans trekked towards Vilna. As they moved through the Ponary woods, past the sites of the killing fields, they came across a freshly dug grave. Avram can still see it, the earth heaving, the grains of dirt sliding down the mounds. The final massacre had taken place just hours before their arrival. While they retreated, German soldiers had murdered sixty Polish priests.

  A pall of crimson hung over the ancient city. Red Army tanks led the assault. Artillery battered the walls. A hunger for revenge seethed in the partisan ranks. For five days the battle raged over the paved streets and cobblestone lanes, from house to house, building to building, through charred courtyards and vacant lots. German soldiers and collaborators were rounded up and shot. Vilna shook under the onslaught.

  Then it was over. An eerie stillness prevailed. The partisans marched through desolate streets. They wept for the loss of their loved ones. They spat on the graves of their enemies; and they lamented the beloved city that had been laid to waste.

  This would be the worst night for Avram, the night of his liberation. His battalion was billeted in ‘Napoleon's palace’, a Vilna landmark, said to have gained its name in 1812 during his ill-fated Russian campaign. The partisans were issued with new boots, several hundred roubles, and discharged by the army command. Avram's comrades dispersed throughout the city to rejoin surviving family and friends. Avram remained in the palace. There was no one to seek out.

  He paced the corridors, the palatial suites. He stood on the balconies and gazed at bombed-out streets. And the darkness claimed him. For the first time in his life, he was completely alone. He was free. The war seemed over. But he was not yet saved. His entire family had vanished into unmarked graves.

  He did not know what to do with himself. He could not rest. He could not bear his solitude. He wandered the rooms with mounting panic. On the night of his liberation something seemed to give way within him: the will to live. There was no past and no future. All that he had once held so dear seemed to have been unmasked as a cruel lie.

  Vilna had become a netherworld, caught between the living and the newly dead, a world of transmigrating souls. Avram surrendered to events that appeared to be beyond his control. He seethed with a sense of loss, and an overwhelming desire for vengeance. He dreamt of confronting his tormentors, the murderers of his loved ones. He imagined tearing them limb from limb, setting fire to their homes, their villages, their prized possessions. He dreamt of watching them as the terror rose in their eyes.

  Yet there were times when even this one remaining desire was replaced by fatigue. ‘I had seen too much brutality, too much killing,’ says Avram. ‘I could not take it any longer. All I wanted was to forget. But it was still taking place. Even now, on the streets of Vilna, I could not avoid it. I was part of it. The war had not truly ended. There were times when we believed it would never end.

  ‘When I had entered Vilna with the Red Army, I came across the body of one of my former teachers, Opeshkin was his name. He was one of my childhood heroes. He had a passion for knowledge, a love of language and literature.

  ‘He too had come out into the forests. He had fought with both weapons and words. He composed poems that depicted our plight. When we found him, his body was still warm. We had arrived just half an hour too late. I felt impotent. Life seemed to be a mere game of chance.’

  Again the stories are cascading, as we move with Avram through the ruins of Vilna, seeking out informers, dragging them from their places of hiding.

  ‘We came upon a former inmate of the ghetto, who had collaborated with the Gestapo. He hailed us as liberators. When he saw that we were going to execute him, he fell to his knees and begged for his life. His wife was screaming. She sank to her knees beside him. I tried to stop my comrades, but they were too hardened. And I was tired. So tired.

  ‘He was sentenced to immediate death. “Killing him is not enough,” said one the partisans. He took out a knife and slowly began to cut into his flesh. We had to drag him away from the screaming prisoner. A comrade took out a pistol and shot the informer on the spot. It was an act of kindness. Otherwise he would have been torn to pieces.

  ‘The act of killing, I could not take it any more. I suppressed my feelings. I had no choice. I would have been crushed. Many times I just wanted to lie down and close my eyes. It was a sweet thought. I wanted to be rid of all feeling.’

  Avram's life hung in the balance. The world was precariously poised. The Red Army was on the advance. The front was moving westwards. Vaselenko, a former comrade and partisan commander, took Avram under his wing. As the new director of railways in the Vilna district, he was anxious to secure able workers. Avram was put in charge of trains that delivered arms and food supplies to the front.

  Avram pursued the job with characteristic zeal, and a sense of abandon. He no longer cared. His survival instincts had deserted him. One morning it was reported that someone had raided a shipment of vodka. While he investigated the report, a Red Army officer approached and asked for several bottles of the prized spirits. Avram refused, pulled out a revolver, and threatened to shoot if the officer disobeyed his orders.

  That evening Avram was summoned to the office of the Red Army captain in charge of the station. ‘Is it true that you threatened one of my men?’ the captain asked. Avram did not deny the charge. The offending officer was called into the room; and again Avram refused his demands for vodka, even though they were supported by the station master.

  ‘They could not believe I wasn't corrupt,’ says Avram. ‘They searched my room and my few belongings. They could not find even one bottle. They were angry. And they saw I was a fool. I did not know how to play their system. Take a bit, give a bit, make a bit on the side, and get drunk. Those were the unspoken rules of the game.’

  There was something else they could not fathom. Something that is evident even now, half a century later, in the tone of voice with which Avram recounts the tale. They could not see that his zeal was the final bastion of his crumbling faith, an attempt to resurrect a shattered will.

  Avram lost the job; and drifted into another, more suited to a man who had lost his capacity to feel. He was assigned to a Red Army intelligence unit. His unit was sent to the Prussian border, to newly captured territory in the wake of the army's advance. Avram interrogated those suspected of collaboration. He knew his job well. He had practised the primitive art of extracting information in the forests of Vilna.

  The autumn of liberation gave way to a winter of interrogation. Avram became captive to the indifferent world of the inquisitor. His fists were clenched. His jaw set tight. He did his job. It was a job that had to be done. He cross-examined, exposed fabrications, forced confessions.

  As for those whom he interrogated? Sometimes Avram registered their terror. Their cries for mercy. In a war waged among civilians ther
e were many losers. Such as the young Lithuanian woman who kept a diary which indicated she had slept with SS officers.

  She seemed small and pathetic. She trembled with fear. She wore cheap lipstick. Her powdered cheeks could not hide her ageing skin. Her barely audible replies trailed off as she lowered her eyes and gnawed her polished nails.

  So this is what it has come to, thought Avram. The front was moving westwards. The Red Army was advancing in triumph, while he was condemned to crawl in the shadows and extract confessions from those who had slept with the enemy.

  Avram's unit returned to Vilna where he continued his intelligence work. One by one they found each other, pre-war comrades, childhood friends who had survived. They would meet in the evenings to play cards and exchange their extraordinary tales.

  Avram was a valued member of this band. As an intelligence officer he had access to stocks of food: rolls of salami, herring, cheese; and flagons of vodka, their ‘medicine’. His scruples had softened. He agreed to accumulate the precious supplies and deliver them to his comrades.

  Avram lay on his dormitory bed. Beside him lay a bag packed with food and drink. In the evening he was to meet his friends. It was a Sunday afternoon in the winter of 1944, and he was engrossed in The Stormy Life of Lazik Roitschwantz, a novel written by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg. He would remember the exact page, the precise passage, and little else, when he next awoke. The hero of the novel was escaping from Russia to Paris. It would be the last thing Avram would remember for many weeks to come.

  Avram awoke six weeks later in a military hospital. The face of a woman entered into his field of vision. As the lens widened he saw her sitting beside the bed. She was wearing a white coat. Behind her floated orderlies and nurses, a world of white upon white.

  She began to question him. Gently. Avram had lost his memory, except for four vital facts, which he clung to with tenacity. He could recite them over and again.

  Fact one: he was a partisan.

  Fact two: he was a Yid.

  Fact three: he was a Vilner.

  Fact four: his mother and sister had been murdered by the Nazis.

  That was all. And for the time being, it was enough, except for the food that was placed beside his bed, as if in reward for his startling performance.

  Avram fell upon the food like a famished beast. The questioning resumed; and the four facts persisted. Avram recited them in a monotone: I am a partisan. I am a Yid. I am a Vilner. And my mother and sister were murdered.

  The psychiatrist changed tack. She held up a chart with the letters of the Russian alphabet. Avram identified them with ease. She handed him a book. He placed his cheeks against the paper. He smelt the pages. Ran his fingers over the text. He saw the letters come into focus, the words form; he gathered in the sentences.

  Avram had always worshipped books. They were his father's most valued possessions. It was a passion he had transmitted to his son. Their Vilna apartment had been crowded with books. They tumbled off the living-room shelves, lay at random upon the kitchen table, clung to every available space.

  Avram can still recall the book the doctor gave him. It was an account of the Spanish Civil War; and it was a wise choice. Not too intimate a subject as to overwhelm, but close enough to his deepest interests to excite his imagination, his love of history and ideas. As he read it, memory, history's indispensable but fragile partner, began to return. Avram lapsed in and out of sleep. He floated between the printed page and his fractured dreams.

  Through his barely opened eyes he glimpsed the psychiatrist. She stood by the bed with a colleague. ‘This is an interesting case,’ Avram heard her whisper. ‘A boy from Vilna. They found him in the streets. Lying unconscious, in a pool of blood. He had a deep gash on his forehead. He was without documents, without arms. All he had as identification was his Red Army coat. He lay in a coma for six weeks from which he has just emerged. He is still suffering from amnesia.’

  ‘Is your name Avramel?’ the visiting doctor asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the patient replied. And was startled into a sudden remembrance of himself. Of a child called Avramel. Avramele. Names first heard in the cradle, within a trusting world.

  ‘Is your family name Zeleznikow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you had a sister called Basia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a father called Yankel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a mother called Etta?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you lived in an apartment at Benedictinski 4?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I knew them all. My name is Dr Baranowski. I sometimes visited your house. Your father was a friend of mine. I knew you when you were a child.’

  Etta. Yankel. Basia. Avramel. A family called Zeleznikow. An apartment at Benedictinski 4. The doctor had touched on the intimate core. A samovar bubbled, centre table. Shadows played upon the walls. Yankel, Etta and their guests sipped brandy and tea. They mapped out missions and talked of ambitious schemes. Avramel lay in bed, in the adjoining room, and was lulled to sleep by the babble of voices. They argued late into the night, enveloped by warmth and light.

  Avram glimpsed familiar faces, shimmering white. And beyond them, he saw the white coat of the doctor who stood above him. She was smiling. At Avram, Avramel, Avramele. A boy with a name, an address, a past. A boy with a father and a cradle and a mother singing: Ai-le-lu-le. Ai-le-lu-le. Sleep my child in peace. Fortunate is he who has a loved one. Ai-le-lu-le-lu. Blessed is he who has a loved one. Ai-le-lu-le-lu…

  Avram was discharged from hospital weeks later. He reported back to intelligence headquarters. He asked for his delayed wages and was told that, in his absence, the cashier had taken his three months of pay. She was involved in an affair with a Red Army officer, and had become pregnant. She needed an abortion. She was desperate for the money.

  ‘Forget it,’ advised Avram's commanding officer. ‘If I report her, she will be sent to Siberia, and you will not regain your pay anyhow. She will repay you with sexual favours, if you wish. Screw her and forget it. We still want to keep you. You have a talent for intelligence work. You are an experienced interrogator.

  ‘We will send you to the Crimea for a rest. And from there you will be sent to a special school in Moscow. We will put your skills to good use.’

  ‘It sounded okay to me,’ Avram tells me. ‘I signed the paper. I didn't care. Nothing mattered to me. It did not seem important. Two days later I was approached by a Red Army captain. He was a member of my intelligence unit.

  ‘“Are you a Yid?” he asked.

  ‘“Yes.”

  ‘“I must tell you something in confidence. You must promise to keep it to yourself. Do you know what papers you have signed? Do you know what sort of school they are sending you to?”

  ‘“I have no idea.”

  ‘“It is a centre for the study of espionage, a school that trains spies. Once you enter it, they will never let you go. You will be trapped for life. If you want to get out while there is still time, I can help you. This is your only chance. When you attend your medical examination ask to be seen by Dr T. He will know what to do.”

  ‘“And who are you? Why do you want to help me?”

  ‘“I am a disciple of the Lubavicher rebbe. He has told me, I can do whatever I like. Eat pork. Drink vodka. Sleep around. Forsake my prayers. As long as I save Jewish lives.”

  ‘The next morning I went to the medical centre. Dr T gave me a certificate that stated I had epilepsy, due to my recent injuries. I would no longer be reliable as an interrogator or spy. When I returned to my commanding officer he took one look at my certificate and ordered me out. “I never want to see you again,” he said. “But do not reveal you have ever been here. Do not breathe a word of what you have been involved in.”

  ‘I left the barracks that had been my home for many months. I wandered the streets of Vilna. Again, I was alone; and free of expectations, of all care. An hour or so later I ran into Nin
a Gerstein. I had known her all my life. Her family lived in the floor above us at Benedictinski 4. I did not know she had survived.’

  ‘She lives in Mexico now. I have met her many times,’ says Masha, who has rejoined us. Her voice sounds disembodied, as if drifting from afar.

  ‘You see, I have got a witness. Now you know what I have been telling you is completely true,’ says Avram with an ironic smile. ‘Nina told me she had spent the war years in Vilna, hidden in a house beyond the ghetto walls. She was being repatriated to Poland in the next few days. This was my big chance. She urged me to leave with her. She was fifteen years older than I. By law, survivors under twenty-one years of age could be adopted by Polish citizens, as long as we were not employed in important work.’

  ‘You see, Martin, it was fated. Beshert,’ says Masha.

  ‘I received my documents from the city council,’ continues Avram. ‘I had lost my intelligence job just in time. My birth certificate proved I was still under twenty-one, by just two months. Days later, as we crossed from Soviet-occupied Lithuania into Poland, I heard the news that Hitler had suicided. I arrived in Lodz on May Day, 1945. And fourteen months later I met Masha. Yes. You could say it was beshert.’

  ‘He was wild when I met him,’ says Masha. ‘He would suddenly explode. Without warning. At the slightest provocation.’

  ‘I am still wild.’

  ‘He is joking. But in those days, when I first met him I was wary. I was unsure; but he kept me with his stories. When I heard them, I understood.’

  ‘I look back at that time,’ says Avram, ‘and I see a man out of control. But I had to find a way out. I needed someone who would listen.’

  ‘His stories were unbelievable,’ says Masha.