The Book of Harlan

by Bernice L. McFadden

  * * *

  By noon, the heat in the car was unbearable.

  Modesty tossed aside, the women unbuttoned their blouses, removed their panty hose, and rolled up the hems of their skirts and dresses.

  The men shrugged off their shirts and used them to wipe perspiration from their faces and armpits or wound them around their heads like turbans.

  The young children fussed and complained, setting off a wave of despair that the burly, bearded man tried to squash with a song. Clapping his meaty hands, he hopped around the children, imploring them with his smile, manipulating their hands with his own, thundering: “Chantez! Chantez!”

  Soon, everyone was clapping and singing so loudly that they didn’t notice as the train came to a stop. When the doors slid open, the song faded and smiles dropped away.

  Peering in at them were a German officer and a frail, humpbacked man wearing wire-framed glasses. The officer commanded the crowd in German, and an interpreter translated the orders into French.

  Slowly, cautiously, the people began to exit the car.

  Meher turned to Harlan. “Voici où se dégourdir les jambes et utiliser les toilettes.”

  Harlan shot him a quizzical look.

  Meher responded with a sheepish smile. “My apologies, I forget. American. English. We use the toilet now and pull our legs.”

  “Pull our legs?”

  Meher rolled his eyes with amusement. “We do this for our legs,” he said, reaching his hands high above his head.

  “Oh,” Harlan sighed, “stretch.”

  “Oui, stretch.”

  They were corralled into the center of a field dotted with wildflowers and ordered to quickly relieve themselves.

  “Together?” one man protested. “Please, the women and children should have their privacy.” He begged until the soldiers, tired of his lament, aimed their rifles at his heart.

  * * *

  They remained there for an hour. Enough time to collect bunches of flowers, to lie down on the soft grass and gaze at the clouds, to pretend that this was the beautiful end to a horrible dream.

  If not for the presence of the soldiers, a passerby would have looked on the scene and thought they were viewing a group of people enjoying a relaxing day in the countryside.

  * * *

  When it came time, the captives, distracted by thoughts of escape, moved grudgingly toward the cattle cars.

  But where would they run? Where were they? As far as they knew, it was the end of the world. There wasn’t a signpost or structure for as far as they could see.

  As Harlan hoisted himself into the car, a woman behind him screamed, “No!”

  He looked around to see Meher streaking across the field, his dark head shimmering in the sunlight, short legs and arms pumping hard with determination.

  An officer pulled his gun, aimed, and fired. Meher swerved, and the bullet cut through the dirt a yard from him. The second shot missed as well.

  “Stop running, Meher,” Harlan whispered to himself. “Stop. Running.”

  The third bullet struck Meher in the back, and he fell dead onto the grass.

  The officer holstered his gun and strolled over to a group of soldiers standing in the shade of the train cars. After they saluted him, there was a brief exchange, which ended with the officer looking at the fifth car.

  Lizard, who was watching from the doorway of the car, backed slowly into the shadows.

  The officer marched up to the man who had been charged as sentry. He pulled his weapon and pressed it against the man’s nose.

  The man dropped to his knees, clasped his hands at his chin, begging, “S’il vous plait, je vous en supplie, monsieur!”

  But there was no mercy given.

  The shot sent him pitching like a rocking chair. He seemed to sway forever before finally, thankfully, keeling over dead.

  * * *

  When the train stopped again, it was dark. All eyes turned to the doors in terrified anticipation.

  Outside, the voices of the patrolling soldiers rose and fell, faded and swelled. The night air seeped into the cars, carrying scents of burning tobacco and fragrant trees.

  The doors remained closed and locked. The night sky gave birth to flickering silver stars. The prisoners lay down on the hay-strewn floor and closed their eyes.

  Chapter 57

  How they woke them.

  As if they were the most reviled creatures on the earth. As if they were criminals. Whacking them across their heads and feet with batons, shouting, yelling, spitting in their faces, dragging them up by their hair and tossing them out of the cars onto their faces.

  “Line up!”

  Holding their stomachs, clutching their backs, wiping the soldiers’ foaming foulness from their faces, the prisoners fell into a queue so ragged, it inflamed the already incensed militia, and the captives fell under a second assault.

  They were led down a cratered and pocked road fringed with trees and the occasional cottage. A few kilometers along, the group came upon an odd sight: a barely worn pair of men’s brown leather shoes, laces tied into perfect bows, sat abandoned in the center of the road as if their owner had simply disintegrated into thin air. Gawking, the prisoners stepped gingerly around the peculiarity.

  Continuing on, they wrestled with the onslaught of words raging in their heads—prayers mostly, but also questions, bits of monologue, explanations, apologies, and the preambles of letters that would never reach paper.

  A mockingbird perched on a weathered signpost caught Lizard’s attention. He raised his eyes and squinted at the fading marker: Weimar 2KM.

  Lizard stopped hard and Harlan, who was just steps behind him and lost in his own thoughts, walked right into his back. A third man stumbled into Harlan and a fourth into the third.

  The bird ranged its black eyes over its audience, made a big show of fanning its tail, and flew off into the treetops.

  Now Lizard’s shoulders slumped as if he had taken on a heavy load.

  The group trudged on. The sun climbed higher, burned hotter.

  Small children were passed from the shoulders of weary parents to the shoulders of stronger strangers. A man guiding a mule carting hay clomped past without a glance.

  A structure emerged in the distance. It appeared to be a grand estate, complete with a stone security wall, towering wrought-iron entry gates, railed terraces, and a clock tower. Up close revealed barbed wire coiled along the walls and fence; beyond that, rows of barracks that stretched for acres.

  Glinting in the sun above the entrance, fashioned from the same sturdy metal of the entry gates, was an insignia that read: Jedem das Seine.

  A young girl with tight black curls aimed her finger at the words, looked at her mother, and asked, “Que dit-il?”

  The woman slapped her daughter’s finger back down to her side.

  Lizard, who had not uttered a word since he and Harlan were snatched from the streets of Montmartre, finally spoke: “It means, Everyone get’s what they deserve.”

  A surprised Harlan caught Lizard by the arm. “Hey, how’d you know that?”

  Lizard’s mouth twitched. The irony of the situation, the downright improbability, had formed a scream in his throat that he had suppressed for two long days and nights. Now it was inching across his tongue, prying at his lips. Grimacing, he successfully forced the scream back down his trachea and looked Harlan dead in the eye. “My father used to say, You can’t go home again, but he was wrong.”

  “What?”

  Lizard smiled unevenly. “Never mind, man,” he said, waving his hand. “It don’t even matter.”

  PART VIII

  The Bitch of Buchenwald

  Chapter 58

  The soldiers took the abstract things first: name, date of birth, country of origin. Then the concrete possessions: money, jewelry, family photographs, the pretty hair clip clasped onto the ponytail of a doe-eyed six-year-old, the children themselves.

  After that, the prisoners were ordered to strip out o
f their clothing. With every stitch discarded, scraps of dignity followed. Later, the hair clippers would relieve them of their vanity.

  In the bathhouses, doused in dark disinfectant that reeked and stung like battery acid, they washed themselves under the pounding spray of cold water. After that, physicians poked, prodded, and plunged gloved fingers into all of their orifices—promptly ridding them of any remaining pride they might have secreted away.

  Between the medical bunker and the uniform bunker, the soldiers used fists, curses, batons, and boot heels to break their will.

  Dressed in blue-and-white-striped prison uniforms, the captives trotted into a massive open-air space known as Roll Call Square. They were made to stand with their arms crossed behind their heads as they listened to the commandant recite the rules, regulations, and penalties associated with life in Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

  Later, they ate a meal of stale bread, potato soup, and coffee. It was the worst food they’d ever tasted, the saddest feast they’d ever been unlucky enough to attend.

  * * *

  Lizard was assigned to a barracks that housed fifty-three men. Within months, the occupants would swell to two hundred. For now, though, Lizard had his pick of beds.

  He chose a lower bunk, opposite the window, sat down on the lumpy straw mattress, and gazed out at the star-freckled sky. Hushed conversation hummed all around him. Soon, however, the talk died as people drifted off to sleep or retreated into the chaos of their worried minds.

  Lizard remained awake long into the night, contemplating the choices he’d made, the lies he’d told, and the roads he’d wandered that had now delivered him back to the very place his parents had fled so many years earlier.

  He supposed it had all begun with his birth, an innocent enough event that was no different from anyone else’s. He was the youngest of three, the last child to be born to Moise and Rachel Rubenstein—Jews who had fled Weimar after Germany was defeated in the Great War.

  “You think we wanted to leave our home?” Lizard’s father often lamented. “We had to go because the Germans put their defeat squarely on the shoulders of Jews.”

  “And the Communists,” Rachel always reminded him.

  “Yes, the Communists. They accused us of working for foreign interests. They called us traitors, treated us like criminals. This,” Moise blared, pounding his fist on the dinner table, “after Jews fought loyally in the war!”

  They’d arrived at Ellis Island in September of 1920 and were met by a cousin who had been as close as a brother to Moise. The family traveled by train to St. Louis, where for over twenty years the cousin had lived, worked, and built a life for himself.

  “And now you will do the same,” he told Moise.

  The first years were lean. The family of five shared one bedroom at the back of the cousin’s small home. Leo (he’d not yet christened himself Lizard) and his sisters shared a double bed and their parents slept on the floor.

  Moise, a gifted tailor, took any and all menial jobs that came his way to supplement the scant income from his stock and trade.

  In time, though, his business grew and prospered, and within three years the family moved into a two-bedroom cold-water flat. Four years after that, Moise was solvent enough to purchase a modest three-bedroom home.

  “Here in America,” Moise reminded his children daily, “you can become anything you want to be.”

  Lizard would take his father’s words to lengths he would have never imagined.

  Chapter 59

  A fighter from the time he was ensconced in his mother’s womb, Lizard burst into the world with fists coiled as tight as rosebuds.

  Moise looked at his infant son and exclaimed, “Look at that! I think we have the next Young Barney Aaron on our hands!”

  They named him Leo Benjamin Rubenstein.

  Lizard grew up to be fearless and stubborn—refusing to walk blocks out of his way in order to avoid the young Polish and Irish Catholic immigrants who harassed Jewish kids as they made their way to and from school each day.

  Go back to Jewland, kike!

  You ain’t wanted here, you dirty money-grubbing Jew!

  Jesus killer!

  Steely-eyed, Lizard would cock his kippah to the side and walk brazenly through the melee of insults, silently challenging anyone to touch him. More often than not, he made it home unscathed. But every once in a while someone would force his hand, leaving him no choice but to stand and fight.

  On one occasion, Lizard found himself cornered by a gang of bat-wielding bigots. He charged directly into the trouble and, catching hold of the lead instigator’s bat, turned the wooden weapon violently against him, nearly beating the youngster to death.

  The boy, one David O’Malley, suffered a broken nose, cracked jaw, and fractured collarbone. For his infraction, the fourteen-year-old Lizard spent sixty days at the Daniel Dodge Reform School for Boys.

  It was there that Leo Benjamin Rubenstein discovered who and what he was meant to be.

  * * *

  Similar to traditional prisons, the Daniel Dodge Reform School had barred windows and towering brick walls. It housed boys in cell blocks according to their racial category and age group.

  The boys rose at six o’clock and sat for breakfast at seven. From seven thirty until noon, they attended traditional school courses. After lunch, they were immersed in trade classes that focused on plumbing, masonry, and tailoring. At four o’clock the boys were sent to the yard to engage in an hour of physical activity. After dinner, they were left to their own devices until eight thirty when the guards announced lights-out. Punishments were dealt out in the form of cold-water baths, flogging, and solitary confinement.

  Upon Lizard’s arrival, he was immediately absorbed by a group of Jewish delinquents who happily schooled him about life on the inside.

  In the yard, Abraham, the skinny but fierce leader of the young Jewish clan, tilted his chin at the throng of black boys perched on a nearby bench, harmonizing over the strum of a battered guitar.

  “Those schvartzes,” he spat, “always with the singing. If they worked as hard as they sang, they would be wealthier than us Jews!”

  Lizard didn’t know much about black people. Had never had any direct dealings with Negroes. He’d seen them, of course—the maids and chauffeurs, coming and going from the homes of his neighbors.

  Lizard’s father had wanted to hire a maid, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. She didn’t think there was anyone on this earth—black or white—who could cook and clean for her family as well as she could. His parents thought that Negroes were basically good people who made bad decisions.

  “A little slow upstairs,” Moise would say, tapping his fountain pen to his temple. “God was not as kind to them as He was to the Jews. They’re one step below human, which is just one step above ape.” Lizard never quite understood the rationale, but he knew better than to challenge his father’s philosophy.

  Abraham jumped up, awkwardly swiveling his hips. “And the way they dance? Ha! Like circus dogs. All that’s missing is a pink tutu.”

  The boys dissolved with laughter. But Lizard wished Abraham and the others would shut up so he could hear the lyrics of the song.

  Abraham aimed a finger at a dark-haired, olive-skinned boy passing the group. “Hey you, calzone, come here!” he screamed.

  The boy lowered his head and quickened his pace.

  “You don’t hear me? You got mozzarella in your ears?”

  The boy threw a nervous glance over his shoulder and then sprinted away.

  “Whatever,” Abraham huffed, puffing his chest out like a rooster.

  One of the other boys poked Abraham’s shoulder. “Hey, where’s Leo going?”

  Abraham turned around to see Lizard sauntering across the yard toward the black boys.

  “Leo! Hey, Leo, where ya going?” Abraham cried, flinging his arms in the air.

  The boys stopped singing when they saw Lizard approaching. The three who were seated stood. Two of
them pounded their fists against their palms.

  “Look, white boy, you need to go back to your section of the yard.”

  Lizard’s feet shuffled to a stop. He looked stupidly around as if he’d just awakened from a trance.

  “Go on now,” another boy added with a flick of his fingers.

  Lizard raised his hands. “I just want to ask a question.”

  The black boys glared at him.

  “That music. What do you call it?”

  The boys exchanged amused glances. When they looked at Lizard again, the menace had vanished from their eyes.

  “That there is what we black folk call the blues.”

  Lizard pondered this. It made perfect sense. “I feel it here,” he said, thumping his chest.

  “Do you now?”

  Another threw out, “That’s where you supposed to feel it.”

  “Well, you should feel it. Negroes got the blues ’cause of crackers like you.”

  Lizard backed away. “I just wanted you to know that I like the way it sounds.”

  When Lizard returned, Abraham sunk his fingers into his shoulders. “Are you meshuggener? Do you know you could have been killed?”

  Lizard wriggled free. “Come on, Abraham. Killed?”

  “Listen, we’re in here for petty crimes—shoplifting, joyriding. Maybe our mothers think we yank our wieners a little too much—but them,” Abraham jabbed his index finger in the direction of the black boys, “they’ve killed people.”

  Lizard smirked. “If they’re murderers, Abraham, why aren’t they in a real jail?”

  Abraham’s cheeks warmed. The bell sounded, saving him from any further humiliation.

  * * *

  Back in his cell, the song looped in Lizard’s mind, lullabying him to sleep. The next morning, he hummed it over the sink while brushing his teeth.

  At dinner, Lizard scoffed down his meal and rushed out to the yard so that he wouldn’t miss a note.

  Far away from Abraham and his cohorts, perched alone on a bench in earshot of the music, Lizard marveled about this life they sang of, so very different from his own, and wondered how it could be so foreign yet feel remarkably like home. He closed his eyes. His arms turned to goose flesh.