Looking out into the clear air, he felt no nostalgia for his old life. It was finished. When Ruth had died, his central place in it had been swallowed up. Now, even the peripheral aspects of it were being destroyed. That world and his life in it had bequeathed to him nothing but the age-old role of wandering Jew. As the old rebbe had kept murmuring in a sing-song melody on the train and boat:
Avram felt his eyes burning, whether from sunshine or tears he didn't know. If only he had made Ruth come with him. If only she were here now.
"Excuse, please . . "Jewish?"
Chesno sprang from the bench and spun around so quickly that the small Japanese man who had posed the question in limited English was nearly knocked over backward. He was a fragile man in a shapeless business suit, carrying a bulky briefcase. The Japanese recovered his balance and smiled hesitantly: "Excuse . . .Jewish?"
Chesno was mindful of the petty indignities - the slapping, the shoving, the spitting - that had usually followed such a question in Europe. He merely nodded.
"Ah!" The Japanese was delighted. Setting his briefcase on the bench, he reached in and took out a very large, highly polished red apple. Bowing deeply, he handed it to Avram. Yet, the Japanese acted as if he were the recipient.
"Thank you, thank you!" he said. "Good luck - gombate !" Still smiling, the man closed his briefcase. "Sayonara, sayonara. Gombate" he said, bobbing his head on every word. Then he walked away and disappeared down the park path.
Chemo stared after the departing man, then looked at the fruit, completely bewildered. It was awfully small to be a disguised bomb. He held it gingerly up to his nose. It didn't look or smell, he thought, as if it had been treated with deadly poison. In fact, it looked absolutely delicious and was beginning to make his mouth water. (If it was, in fact, an apple, at least he knew how to deal with it. When he had first confronted the "ba-na-na," he had been horrified by the taste, until someone explained that it had to be peeled first.) But who was the Japanese man? And why did Avram's Jewishness entitle him to an apple?
The immediacy of the encounter and the question of the apple cleared his mind of its depression. Chesno stared back along the path, out the gate of the park and down the steep hill. Jewcom's headquarters were in a not very fashionable section of town, at Ikuta 4-2. If there was any place where he could find out whether an apple given by a Japanese to a Jew was fit to be eaten it was there.
Sam Evans was a short, broad-shouldered man with a remarkably easy manner. One of the foremost citizens of Kobe, and its senior Jewish resident, he had lived there since 1919 when, as Evanskoffsky, he had picked up a job with a ship-chandlering company during a one-day stopover of the ship on which he had planned to travel to America. Evans had done well as a ship chandler and over the years had acquired a good deal of real estate. Along the way, he had also gained the respect and friendship of many members of the local governmental bureaucracy, a significant asset in solving Jewcom's refugee problems. Sam had been the honorary president of the Kobe Jewish community from the day of its founding. But the lofty sounding title was misleading; actually he was very much involved with the day to day affairs of Jewcom. On this particular Monday, he was in its office putting a week's worth of refugee statistics into sensible order for the edification of the Gaimusho.
Avram knocked politely on the side of the door but walked in without waiting for a reply. Since his arrival nine days before, he had spent a good deal of time at Jewcom and had never heard any answer other than "Come in."
The organization in charge of the present lives and uncertain futures of hundreds of refugees had to make do with a very small office. Metal file cabinets stuck out from one wall, bookshelves stuffed with green and white file binders lined another. The sun streamed in through deep windows onto two battered wooden desks.
Evans looked up from his figures and smiled as Avram told him how he had come by the apple he was holding in his hand.
"Sit down, sit down," Evans said, pushing aside the statistics. Heedless of the tri-lingual "No Smoking" sign on the wall, he offered Avram a cigarette.
"It was probably one of the boys from the Holiness Church," he guessed. "They're a Christian sect who believe in something they call the 'common origin theory' - that the Japanese are descendants of the so-called ten lost tribes who somehow made their way here after they were driven out of Israel. The society prays three times a day for the survival of the Jews and for our return to Palestine. In fact, they're such Zionists, they've lost the support of the Christian missionaries around here. The precise logic of it all eludes me; but they are very nice. About a month ago, we had a bunch leaving for Palestine. Who should turn up at the train station but Bishop Nakada he's the leader - and about a hundred of his followers, waving little Zionist flags and shouting 'Banzai !' And as our boys were boarding the train, they started singing the Hatikvah. It was a little strange, but very, very moving. They are remarkable people, the Japanese. I've lived here twenty-two years and I'm still never sure which way they're going to jump. . . . Yes, go ahead, eat it. Looks delicious! No, thanks. I don't . . . well, yes, but a small piece. . . ."
When a man with nothing suddenly has something, you don't refuse him the satisfaction of sharing it.
The two men spoke briefly of Chesno's visa status. He had once again filled out the lengthy applications for entry into the United States, as well as Canada and Australia. Contrary to his hopes in Vilna, though, it did not seem any easier to be admitted to any country from Japan than it had been from Lithuania. He had already been rejected - thanks to his old soccer injury - for a place in the Polish army in exile that was being formed in Canada. His request for one of the much-prized Palestine certificates, British permission to enter that disputed land, had been turned down too. That, though, had scarcely come as a surprise. For the past several months, only the highest-ranking members of Zionist organizations had been selected for the few remaining places on the British quota. So many countries in the world, he had thought, and so few that would even consider taking in a refugee.
"How long can we keep extending our transit visas?" Avram asked, slipping unconsciously into the security of the group point of view. "If the unthinkable should happen and some of us should not manage to be accepted somewhere. . . ."
Avram didn't finish the sentence and Evans didn't rush in to fill the void. He simply did not know. The refugees could not stay in Japan indefinitely. Cooperative as the Japanese were now, the political and international situation was changing daily and in the wrong direction. There was no way of knowing how long it would be until something happened somewhere that would make it politically impossible for Japan to continue its hospitality to this growing number of destitute Jews. Day to day, matters were going smoothly. But if the crunch came and the Jews had to leave? Eighteen months ago, when the world situation was better in all respects, the ship, St. Louis, had only barely been accepted in Belgium after sailing halfway round the world seeking refuge for the nine hundred and thirty-seven European Jews on board. Evans didn't want to think about what might happen if such a ship had to set out now from Japan.
"We're working on the problem," Evans said, then eased into another subject.
"You came in with that rebbe from Amshenov, didn't you?
"The sweet old man with the long white beard? Yes, right, straight through from Vilna. Why? Has he gotten worse? He was sick for most of the trip, I think."
"No, actually he's better, which may turn out to be worse for us. This morning he sent a cable, in Hebrew, to Vilna that has absolutely thrown the censors into a state of confusion. They can cope with a lot of languages, but not Hebrew. The kempeitai is suspicious enough of foreigners without something like this coming up. Hanin - you know him? - he's down at the telegraph office now, translating."
Avram sat back comfortably in his chair. It was a treat for him just to sit in this office and talk to this man. Comfortable and safe as Kobe was, it was just as boring as Vilna had been. Nothing to do all day but walk the narrow
streets which, after only a short time seemed to repeat themselves in tedious lines of low wooden houses and shops. What had been fascinating in Tsuruga quickly became overly familiar. Yet at the same time, in spite of individual acts of kindness, like the gift of the apple, he felt very cut off from the Japanese. Any understanding of Japan was unreachable, cut off by the wall of language, a form of speech unlike anything Avram had ever before encountered. In Kobe, even more than in Vilna, the refugees were forced by circumstances to associate only with themselves. And among the refugees, simple relaxed, intelligent conversation on impersonal subjects was at a premium. All day and into the night, they talked only about visas and money, about the interminable paperwork or, at best, about local living conditions and how best to spend one's one-and-a-half-yen daily stipend.
In the Jewcom office, Sam Evans sensed his visitor's need to talk and accepted it as more important than the paperwork awaiting him. The two men talked for half an hour or so before the return of tall, wavy-haired Leo Hanin, whom Chesno recognized as one of the Jewcom members who had picked them up at Tsuruga.
"That cable the rebbe sent," Hanin reported, "SHISHA MISKADSHIM BETALLIS ECHAD. That's what it said: 'Six can be married under one prayer shawl,' and it was signed 'Kalisch.'"
Avram and Sam Evans were bewildered. "A response to a religious question?" Evans suggested.
"That's what I told the censors and that satisfied them. But it didn't satisfy me, so I tracked down the rebbe for an explanation."
Hanin moved closer to the tiny kerosene heater which was providing the only warmth in the room.
"It seems the rebbe discovered, while going through immigration, that a visa is valid not only for one person but for one family. In other words, if it looks like a family, up to six people can come in on one visa. So why waste visas? he thought. Arrange for groups of six people to come as 'families.' Not so dumb, no? He was quite pleased with himself."
"More work for you," Avram suggested, "if you get six times as many of us."
Evans looked out the window at the dozens of refugees crowded, as always, around the message board. "Better here than there," he said. "We can handle almost any number, somehow or other, if they can just get here."
"Speaking of which," Hanin said, "while I was at the telegraph office, I picked up a cable from Vladivostok listing the names of the passengers who just embarked. Should we include them in the statistics you're putting together for Inuzuka?"
Evans glanced at the paper held out to him and nodded. "What I wish someone would tell me is why Inuzuka, who is a navy man stationed in Shanghai, should be so interested in Jewish refugees coming into Kobe."
"I don't know. Maybe Inuzuka thinks that how we handle things here is how he might handle refugees in Shanghai. But, if statistics make the Japanese happy, statistics they shall have. God knows, they've been cooperative and helpful so far."
"We've got a couple of children coming this time," Hanin went on.
Probably it was the engaging conversation plus the mention of children that made Avram suddenly think of the son of Orliansky in Vilna. Pondering the fate of this family was not a pleasant thought. Orliansky had seemed such a mensch when he'd gotten to know him. A kind of friendly fellow, caught as they all were in circumstances not of their own making, but trying his best to get himself and his family through it all. But when the lists had been posted of those who would get exit permits, the Orliansky name had not been on them. Not on the long major list put up first, nor on any of the subsequent shorter lists of additions and corrections. Not his name or his wife's, or even his children's. At first, Orliansky seemed unable to believe it. Avram would see him daily in the Club, sitting on a sticky chair, staring, uncomprehending, into the middle distance. Gradually, after appeals to Intourist had had no effect, Orliansky's mood had grown blacker. His expression changed from uncomprehending to vindictive. When Avram tried to speak with him, he was unpleasant, curt, biting off his words almost before they were out of his mouth. And then he disappeared. Mischa, his son, still turned up occasionally, looking both better dressed and better fed than he had before. But the boy would only say vaguely that his father was "doing things" in another part of the city. Anxious to put Lithuania behind him at the earliest possible moment, Avram had more to worry about than the fate of his former acquaintance. But soon, Avram began to hear stories circulating through the club, stories about a big friendly bear of a man - a Jew - who was preying on the unsophisticated shtetl Jews who didn't know the ways of the world.
"Are you leaving for Japan soon?" the big friendly one would ask. "Are you one of the lucky ones whose name appeared on the lists?"
"Yes, I am," his mark would reply.
"I congratulate you and think you very fortunate," the friendly one would say. "But I must warn you of a fact that has recently come to my ears. The Russians - God curse their souls - won't let you take anything of value out of the country. No, absolutely nothing. No money, no jewelry, no gold, no stamps. What's more, you can't sell anything valuable within Russia. You can't barter it away: you can't dispose of it in any fashion whatsoever! And if they catch you trying to do so. . . ." The unstated threat was quite terrifying enough.
The victim would be astonished. He had no idea the Russians would be interested in, say, his grandmother Esther's one silver candlestick which he had carefully hoarded all this time.
"Well, no matter," he would reply. "If I should have something of value, I will simply sew it into the lining of my coat. The Russians will never find it."
"Never find it!? Why, don't you know, my friend? They have a special machine, which they have only recently invented that can actually see into things. They'll look into the lining of your coat as easily as you look into a Torah scroll on a Saturday morning!"
Now the victim would begin to be frightened. That one silver candlestick was his security, his savings account, his cushion to fall back on if the charity ever ran out.
"Well . . . but, what shall I do, if I should have something of value?"
The solution to the problem was always the same. Fortunately, the big friendly bear of a man happened to need one silver candlestick, or whatever it was that his mark possessed. Mind you, he couldn't pay much, certainly not what such a beautiful piece must be worth. But . . . better to get some money for it now than to get a death sentence for it in Vladivostok.
The story had upset Avram, and upset him even more when the descriptions given by the victims all pointed to Orliansky.
"Aren't they doing enough to us, without our doing such things to ourselves?" he asked himself. "Why is a Jew preying on another Jew?"
But he had not had to dwell long on this latest of the terrible stories. He had known the thrill of seeing his name on that list. Whatever was in store, at least he was getting away from here. And Orliansky wasn't. Who was he, Avram Chesno, to blame such an unfortunate man for thinking he had a right, in some small way, to even the score with the "lucky ones?"
The thought of Orliansky took a little of the edge off the pleasantness of the afternoon he had just spent with Evans and the savor of the apple he had eaten down to the seeds. The daylight was fading, and the two Jewcom men had wives and homes waiting for them. Avram said goodbye and went outside. With the sun down, the cold seeped through his old coat as he began the short walk back toward the heim. As he passed the synagogue, he could hear the enthusiastic responses of the evening prayer service: the yeshiva boys had already set up study rooms at the center and were hard at work, learning and praying fourteen hours a day.
Yosuke Matsuoka was a busy man. As foreign minister of a country trying to upgrade itself to empire status he had to contend with half the world including the United States, which opposed his efforts to dominate the sixth of the world that was China. Matsuoka was also, by nature, something of an eccentric - bright and shrewd, but inconsistent. And his habit of at least appearing to change directions in midstream made his working pace even more frenetic.
Dr. Kotsuji was wel
l aware of all these sides to Matsuoka. He was also aware that on March 12, 1941, the foreign minister would be departing for face-to-face meetings with Hitler in Berlin and Stalin in Moscow. That had long since been announced in the press. So, all in all, Dr. Kotsuji was surprised to receive word not long before that date that the very busy official wanted to see him in Tokyo as soon as possible.
As he had during their last get-together a few months before, Matsuoka suggested that they go for a walk, this time nearby, in the open air of Hibiya Park.
"We are running headlong into some problems with your refugees," the foreign minister said after disposing quickly of the civilities.
Kotsuji had never thought of the Jews as his refugees; but he was quite aware of Matsuoka's position, and it didn't occur to him to quibble.
"I had anticipated some trouble with the Germans by letting these people pass through Japan at all. But now. . . . Do you know there are hundreds of Jews coming in every week, a torrent, a flood! And what is leaving? Virtually nothing! This was not my plan."
"Didn't you think that so many would come?" Kotsuji ventured.
"No, I didn't think 'so many would come!' And I certainly thought more would leave. They really have no sense of practicality, these Jews - no sense of what is proper. They come and come and come. . . . Surely word gets back that there is as little hope for them getting into America from here as from Lithuania or from the Soviet Union!"
The Fugu Plan Page 16
