After they discovered me in the kitchen, Mama and Papa must have talked. A week later, Papa came to me and announced that, because the heat was becoming more oppressive, he understood that I could not be expected to remain in a stifling room all day. Not only was the door to be unlocked, but I could occasionally leave. Finally, they were treating me as an adult. Papa continued and said he hoped that I knew that I would soon see Margot again. He also told me that they, too, missed her. Papa never said how, or where, or when I might see Margot again; he simply said he hoped that I knew that I would soon see her again. I almost believed him.
'Are they killing people today?'
I heard Rosa's voice and turned from the window. The early autumn light was catching Rosa's face and accentuating her pale features.
'Don't watch if they're killing people.'
I stepped down from the crate and smiled at my friend. I was the same height as Rosa. These days, she seldom seemed to venture anywhere without her shawl. During the summer, the shawl was occasionally forgotten, but now, summer over, she always wore the shawl across her rounded shoulders.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Please, watch if you must.'
'I don't like watching.'
'I know you don't. You're just curious. It's perfectly normal.'
I felt ashamed. There was nothing normal about watching a boy dancing barefoot, one hand outstretched, his brother's corpse curled at his feet, and people slouching around them both as though neither of them were visible. Normal? I had almost forgotten the meaning of the word. These days, Rosa and I talked more easily. She informed me that I was lucky, for my parents were relatively young. Even though the weather was turning bitter, they still had the energy to go out. They still had hope.
It was almost December, and snow had fallen heavily and settled. In the street it was thick and discoloured, and piled up like ploughed mud. Rosa had long confessed to me that she was married to her unshaven friend in dirty worn clothes, but that was all she told me. She opened and closed her confession in a single sentence. He is my husband. As I huddled in bed, and imagined the fearsome wind in some distant place stripping the remaining leaves from trees, I realized that these days I heard the pounding of his feet less frequently. I was disappointed, for I had become accustomed to his winking at me conspiratorially before he disappeared into Rosa's room. And then one afternoon, as the snow began to fall again, and while I stood on the crate wearing cap, scarf and gloves, I asked Rosa without turning to face her.
'Why does your husband not live with us?'
She did not answer. For a few moments, I was too nervous to turn around and face her. When I eventually did turn, she was smiling sadly.
'I told you, he's fighting on the outside.'
'He lives on the outside?'
She nodded.
'But he could get you out. You could live on the outside too. Both of you.'
'Yes,' said Rosa. 'That is possible, but then he would have difficulty visiting me.'
That evening, I dared to raise the name of my friend Rosa with my parents. Mama looked up at me and shook her head slowly and with resignation.
'She should forget him and live among her own kind. With them, she has a chance of a life.'
Papa looked across at his wife.
Spring arrived. It ceased snowing. In our streets birds did not sing, or trees bud, or flowers bloom. There were rumours that, within the year, we would be taken to the east. That the streets and houses would be emptied. And in the east? Work, of course. We would be required to labour like farm animals until we dropped. I had begun to question Rosa openly about her husband who seemed to be neglecting her. Three months had passed since his last visit. Had he gone away? Rosa simply smiled and shook her head.
'But why does he want to fight? Does he not see that it is hopeless?'
'It is not hopeless,' snapped Rosa. 'If we do not fight, then we have lost.'
(We? Always we. Rosa and her 'we'.)
'But we have already lost, Rosa. They are everywhere.'
I paused, for my friend was staring at me with a pained expression. I softened my tone.
'I'm sorry.'
'Eva, we have not lost. And I cannot go to him. I am a wife, so I must be where he can visit me.'
'But with us you are in danger, Rosa.'
'But with him I am in danger. It's all the same.'
'But you can save yourself. If they come in the night, there will be no time for explanations.'
For a moment there was silence. And then Rosa took my hand.
'Eva, I have made my choice. I have no regrets. Truly, no regrets.'
It was a long hot summer that second year, and the heat served only to increase the stench and the sadness. People continued to fall dead in the street from starvation, but an increasingly common practice was the taking of one's own life, and that of one's family. Jumping from a high window was a popular individual method, while rat poison administered to food was a common way of dispatching a household at one sitting. By utilizing these and other procedures, one remained master of life and death. A precious gift. Mama fell ill, so it was now Papa alone who left on the daily search for food. Rosa and I would sit together in the kitchen, the heat dripping from our bodies, talking and mopping our brows, while Mama lay alone in the cool darkness of her room. And then one day, Papa came home early, and he told Rosa and I that he had seen a girl of about my own age throw herself in front of a military vehicle. Papa's jacket was stained with blood. The horror of this girl's suicide had struck Papa a heavy blow. He waited a few minutes. Then he calmly told us that today he had also seen the son of a fellow doctor begging with open palms. Again, he waited a few moments, then he looked from Rosa to his daughter, then back again to Rosa.
'Some among us are behaving like animals. But we are human beings.'
And then he lowered his eyes. Papa's heavily fortified personality lay in ruins.
'It is written in the Holy Books,' he began, 'that a time will come when the living shall envy the dead.'
The summer heat gave way to grey skies, and then the freezing chill of a second winter. By now I had lost interest in my studies, although I occasionally still sought refuge in my books. An ailing Mama simply languished in bed and waited for her husband to return. One morning, she called me in to her bedside. With her stiffened fingers she touched my threadbare dress, and then, in a feverish voice, she began to try to explain the pain that she felt at not being able to buy clothes for daughters who were growing tall.
'I remember, you girls used to love to look at yourselves in the mirror. You used to try different hairdos, and secretly put on my make-up, and my jewellery, and my clothes. But of course, I knew. Neither of you could ever put anything back in the right place.'
Then Mama suddenly stopped, her face knotting before my eyes into a painful grimace. She turned from me. I left Mama and went into my cold room and locked the door. I sobbed all night. And then, in the morning, I began to keep a journal, but within a week I gave it up, for I could no longer summon the energy to maintain the daily pretence that I was writing to my sister.
I saw less of my friend Rosa. When I did see her, she seemed to be physically shrinking as the days became shorter. If her aspect could be used as a barometer of our general condition, then we were thoroughly exhausted. Out in the streets, the hostile noises and barked orders had begun to grow even louder. One morning, I looked through the high kitchen window as the bulky sewage wagon rumbled by. These days, it was pulled by men who were wrapped like mummies. The fresh snow and weak grey light made these thin figures appear ghostly, a state to which they would soon be reduced. There was no longer water in the standpipes, so people cleaned themselves in snow. And there were no tools to bury the dead in this frozen earth, so it was now acceptable for people to simply lie where they fell. By the time the spring arrived, we knew that our streets would soon be sealed. It was over. We were to be sent away on the trains, for we were needed elsewhere. The rumour was that, by the end of the sp
ring, the whole district would be reduced to rubble. I wanted to discuss this with Rosa, but after the long hot summer I seldom saw her. My friend's increasingly reclusive behaviour, and her obvious physical decline on the few occasions that I did glimpse her, disturbed me greatly. I could not understand what was happening to her.
Towards the end of the summer, I had sat with Rosa in the kitchen and told her about Margot. About her being in hiding. About my sister, who was a year older than I, and who looked like them. (Apparently, according to Mama, I bore the stamp of Jerusalem.) I asked Rosa that if, by any chance, she should change her mind and decide to leave, would she please find my sister and be sure to tell her that Eva loves her and is thinking about her. Rosa clasped her bony hands around mine and whispered, 'Of course.' And the longer I talked to Rosa, the more I found myself speaking to her as though her leaving were inevitable, her discovery of Margot only a matter of time, her reclamation of her old life a certainty. Yet Rosa said nothing further. She simply listened as I retold tales of Margot's escapades, and of how I was sure that my sister was harbouring a boyfriend named Peter, and I talked on until I noticed the sad smile on Rosa's face. And then I fell silent in embarrassment. And then again, Rosa squeezed my hands between her own. 'Don't worry,' she whispered. 'It will be all right.'
This turned out to be the last conversation that I ever had with Rosa. At nights I heard her walking around her room, and during the day, although I stationed myself in the kitchen so that I might see her should she venture out, Rosa seemed determined to be by herself. And then, one late spring day, we received the fateful news that at six-thirty the next morning we were to report to the train station with clothes for a journey. All valuables were to be surrendered, and all who failed to report would be punished. I watched as a defeated Mama and Papa prepared themselves in silence. I could see the terrible truth in Papa's dead eyes. His flame of hope had gone out long before the arrival of this latest gust of wind. And Mama, having reluctantly removed her wedding ring and her mother's antique necklace, simply sat with her head bowed.
But my thoughts were not with my parents. I wondered about Rosa. Had she truly been abandoned? I turned my mind back to that first afternoon nearly two years ago, when Rosa caught me standing on the wooden crate, a shaft of light illuminating her face, a young woman waiting for her husband. And I remembered how, after she had gone back to her room, I had again looked out of the window. However, unable to concentrate, I had climbed down and sat at the table and simply stared at her closed door. When Mama and Papa arrived back, they were extremely angry to find me sitting in the kitchen. Papa stormed off into their room, but Mama stayed with me. I explained in a low voice about Rosa, and how wonderful but frightened she was. And Mama listened. Then, having heard me out, Mama looked in the direction of Rosa's room and spoke quietly, but firmly. 'She married outside of her people.' Mama spoke as though she wished me to understand that this was the greatest crime that a person could commit. Then she smiled at me, rose to her feet, and left me by myself. It was our secret. I had no idea that Mama possessed such attitudes. That night, I lay in bed and listened to the immensity of the silence coming from Rosa's room. Nearly two years later, the same silence.
I discovered the body. We were packed and ready to go. By now, my parents possessed little of value that had not been hidden, or confiscated, or sold. Just their wedding rings and the necklace. Papa decided to hide these treasures, although I don't believe that he truly expected to reclaim them. However, at the darkest hour of the night, a floorboard had been lifted and carefully replaced. But it was futile. Even I knew this. And was it worth the risk? They had promised that for every item discovered, one hundred would be killed. But these days. One hundred. One thousand. Who was counting? As we stood with a suitcase each, I asked Papa if I might say goodbye to Rosa. Quickly, he said. Quickly. I knocked and then carefully opened the door. I sensed immediately that it was rat poison. Rosa was fully dressed and lying on the bed. Beside her lay her suitcase. She was ready to leave. Then, at the last minute, she couldn't leave. Abandoned. She stared at me from her deep, long-suffering eyes. Then I felt Papa's hand on my shoulder.
'Come, Eva. We have to go.'
In the sky, there shone a solitary morning star. The three of us joined the flood of people pouring down the street towards the train station. A human river of shattered lives, and at eighteen I now understood how cruel life could be. The men who lined our way with their machine guns and angry dogs were unnecessary. All of us knew that at this stage we had little choice. I gazed up at the church clock. It read five o'clock. It was the same clock that I could see from the kitchen window. For almost two years, it had read five o'clock. Here, among these houses which had become our prisons and our tombs, there was no midnight, there were no bells, there was no time. I looked around at the miserable and crumbling buildings, knowing in my heart that those who were hiding would soon be found. And killed. Buildings would be looted, contraband discovered, and whole streets burnt. In time, there would be no evidence that any of us had ever lived here. We never existed. According to Papa, we had followed the advice of our prophets. 'Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.' But it appeared that there would be no end to the indignation. Mama and Papa marched on with grim resolution, and I scurried to keep up with them. My suitcase was heavier than theirs, for it was filled with books, but I was determined that I should carry it myself. I knew that they did not want to talk to me about Rosa. For them, Rosa was already a thing of the past. My eyes were full of tears. Their eyes were firmly trained on the future.
DURING the winter when we sorted through our family belongings, in order to prepare for the move from our four-storey house to the small apartment on the other side of the city, Margot and I came across the old photograph album. The black one with the gilt trim and the specially reinforced edges. Mama kept it on the top shelf in the drawing room, where she imagined that it was out of our reach. Well, it used to be. Mama had forgotten that Margot and I had grown up.
Mama took it from us and then swept her hand along the shelf to make sure that nothing else was up there. Then, instead of stuffing it into a suitcase or a bag, or leaving it on the huge pile of materials whose fate was yet to be decided, she set it down on the drawing-room table and dusted its cover with a cloth. Beneath the skin-like layer of dust, a new object appeared. Mama opened it, and Margot and I gathered at her side, eager to see who or what it might reveal.
There were pictures of people we had never seen before. Old formal portraits, with photographers' names embossed at the bottom of the print. Portraits of old ladies perched on the edge of white wicker chairs, profiles of bearded men, people about whom, when Margot and I asked after them, Mama simply shook her head. They must belong to your Papa. The fact that she could remember neither these people nor their names clearly disturbed her. She looked particularly closely at a yellow-edged photograph of an old man in a suit. He had a doughy face, and an ugly sack of flesh which swelled beneath his chin, yet he insisted on leaning against a cane in a dandyish manner. No, she couldn't place him, either.
In the photographs of Margot as a child, I noticed that she always flirted with the camera. Head thrown back, eyes deliberately bright – she played the coquette.
'Look at you, you show-off,' I said. 'Always looking up at the camera.'
In my photographs, I had a tendency to look down. My head was always lowered, but my eyes looked up, as though I were framing a timid request. Such a contrast in manner.
And then we saw the photographs of Uncle Stephan. He was tall and strong, and he stared confidently into the camera with his soft eyes. Seeing him again sent my mind spinning back six years to when he visited the house. I was about to speak, when I felt the outside of Margot's shoe scuff my ankle, and I knew that I should not comment upon these photographs. Five of them spread across two pages. Uncle Stephan. Always on his own. Always staring di
rectly into the lens of the camera. Always standing.
Uncle Stephan was Papa's only brother. He had journeyed to the British colony of Palestine, for he wanted to defend the new Jewish settlements against attacks from the Arabs, and to prepare the land for large-scale settlement by Jews of all ages and backgrounds. However, his journey was made all the more arduous by the fact that in order to visit this so-called promised land he had to leave behind a young wife and child, and break off from his medical studies. If I think now of Uncle Stephan, I can see a man who, if truth be told, did not know how to handle us children. There was a part of him that was secret and inaccessible, and we could always sense this. Children are able to pick up on such weaknesses and they can be ruthless. As time went by, Uncle Stephan learnt to protect himself against his nieces, although he never held himself distant from either one of us. He had about him a warm detachment, which must have been his way of enduring the pain of his life, but I suppose the truth is that we girls did not really know him. But then again, we did not make much of an effort.
The Nature of Blood Page 7
