by Edith Eger
My mother and Magda are in the kitchen. Magda’s chopping apples for the charoset. Mother’s mixing matzo meal. They glower over their work, barely registering my arrival. This is their relationship now. They fight all the time, and when they’re not fighting they treat each other as though they are already in a face-off. Their arguments used to be about food, Mother always concerned about Magda’s weight, but now the conflict has grown to a general and chronic hostility. “Where’s Klarie?” I ask, swiping chopped walnuts from a bowl.
“Budapest,” Magda says. My mother slams her bowl onto the counter. I want to ask why my sister isn’t with us for the holiday. Has she really chosen music over us? Or was she not allowed to miss class for a holiday that none of her fellow students celebrates? But I don’t ask. I am afraid my questions will bring my mother’s obviously simmering anger to a boil. I retreat to the bedroom that we all share, my parents and Magda and me.
On any other evening, especially a holiday, we would gather around the piano, the instrument Magda had been playing and studying since she was young, where Magda and my father would take turns leading us in songs. Magda and I weren’t prodigies like Klara, but we still had creative passions that our parents recognized and nurtured. After Magda played, it would be my turn to perform. “Dance, Dicuka!” my mother would say. And even though it was more a demand than an invitation, I’d savor my parents’ attention and praise. Then Klara, the star attraction, would play her violin and my mother would look transformed. But there is no music in our house tonight. Before the meal, Magda tries to cheer me up by reminding me of seders past when I would stuff socks in my bra to impress Klara, wanting to show her that I’d become a woman while she was away. “Now you’ve got your own womanhood to flaunt around,” Magda says. At the seder table she continues the antics, splashing her fingers around in the glass of wine we’ve set for Prophet Elijah, as is the custom. Elijah, who saves Jews from peril. On any other night our father might laugh, despite himself. On any other night our mother would end the silliness with a stern rebuke. But tonight our father is too distracted to notice, and our mother is too distraught by Klara’s absence to chastise Magda. When we open the apartment door to let the prophet in, I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the cool evening. In some deep part of myself I know how badly we need protection now.
“You tried the consulate?” my father asks. He isn’t even pretending to lead the seder anymore. No one but Magda can eat. “Ilona?”
“I tried the consulate,” my mother says. It is as though she conducts her part in the conversation from another room.
“Tell me again what Klara said.”
“Again?” my mother protests.
“Again.”
She tells it blankly, her fingers fidgeting with her napkin. Klara had called her hotel at four that morning. Klara’s professor had just told her that a former professor at the conservatory, Béla Bartók, now a famous composer, had called from America with a warning: The Germans in Czechoslovakia and Hungary were going to start closing their fist; Jews would be taken away come morning. Klara’s professor forbade her to return home to Kassa. He wanted her to urge my mother to stay in Budapest as well and send for the rest of the family.
“Ilona, why did you come home?” my father moans.
My mother stabs her eyes at him. “What about all that we’ve worked for here? We should just leave it? And if you three couldn’t make it to Budapest? You want me to live with that?”
I don’t realize that they are terrified. I hear only the blame and disappointment that my parents routinely pass between them like the mindless shuttle on a loom. Here’s what you did. Here’s what you didn’t do. Here’s what you did. Here’s what you didn’t do. Later I’ll learn that this isn’t just their usual quarreling, that there’s a history and a weight to the dispute they are having now. There are the tickets to America my father turned away. There is the Hungarian official who approached my mother with fake papers for the whole family, urging us to flee. Later we learn that they both had a chance to choose differently. Now they suffer with their regret, and they cover their regret in blame.
“Can we do the four questions?” I ask to disrupt my parents’ gloom. That is my job in the family. To play peacemaker between my parents, between Magda and my mother. Whatever plans are being made outside our door I can’t control. But inside our home, I have a role to fill. It is my job as the youngest child to ask the four questions. I don’t even have to open my Haggadah. I know the text by heart. “Why is this night different from all other nights?” I begin.
At the end of the meal, my father circles the table, kissing each of us on the head. He’s crying. Why is this night different from all other nights? Before dawn breaks, we’ll know.
Continue Reading…
The Choice
Edith E Eger
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© RDAN ENGLE
EDITH EGER is an eminent psychologist and Holocaust survivor. She has worked with veterans, military personnel, and victims of physical and mental trauma. She lives in La Jolla, California. She is the author of the award-winning book The Choice.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Edith-Eva-Eger
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ALSO BY EDITH EGER
The Choice
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ISBN 978-1-9821-4309-1
ISBN 978-1-9821-4311-4 (ebook)
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction: Unlocking Our Mental Prisons
Chapter 1: What Now?
Chapter 2: No Prozac at Auschwitz
Chapter 3: All Other Relationships Will End
Chapter 4: One Butt, Two Chairs
Chapter 5: No One Rejects You But You
Chapter 6: What Didn’t Happen
Chapter 7: Nothing to Prove
Chapter 8: Would You Like to be Married to You?
Chapter 9: Are You Evolving or Revolving?
Chapter 10: The Nazi in You
Chapter 11: If I Survive Today, Tomorrow I Will be Free
Chapter 12: There’s No Forgiveness Without Rage
Conclusion: The Gift
Acknowledgments
‘The Choice’ Teaser
About the Author
Copyright
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