A Life Worth Living

by Pnina Baim

  Cobi gave her a little smile. “It’s just that I don’t know if I believe in God,” he said finally. “Do you?”

  “Yeah,” Gaby answered automatically.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Gaby said, trying to articulate her belief. “I just feel like someone is watching over me, watching over all of us. When I read all the testimonies of the survivors, I can see the hand of God helping them survive.”

  “How can you say that?” Cobi slammed down his beer bottle, making Gaby jump. “God was the one who put them in that situation to begin with!”

  Gaby took the beer bottle away from Cobi before he could break it. “I feel like every survivor has this moment when it’s clear that God is directing his steps so that he will live. Remember you told me that story of that young boy? He was on a death march and he thought he was going to die and that it was all over, but then this Nazi gave him a hot cup of coffee and it gave him the energy to keep on going.”

  “Or,” Cobi said, “maybe the Nazi just got a stroke of conscience, coincidentally just as the war was almost over. He knew there would be hell to pay once Germany surrendered, and he was probably hoping that his little act of kindness would protect him, come payback time.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Gaby said, not willing to concede her point.

  “You are quite the optimist.” Cobi took his beer back from Gaby and put it to his lips. “What about Rikky? Where was God then?”

  Gaby sucked her teeth and looked away. She wouldn’t admit it, but she had the same question Cobi had. Where was God when Rikky died? “I don’t know. I didn’t say I had all the answers in the world.”

  Cobi put his arm around her shoulder. “All right, take it easy. You can believe in God if it makes you feel better.”

  Gaby smiled to show she didn’t care what he said and drank the rest of her beer, watching as Tali sat closer and closer to the man she was flirting with until she was practically sitting in his lap.

  It was time to go home, time to prepare for her interview tomorrow and shabbat and Hillel’s visit. She was getting sick of all the posturing going on around her. She wanted to go home and call Hillel. He was the only person she wanted to talk to now.

  “It’s getting late, I gotta go,” Gaby said, putting down some bills to cover her drink and gathering up her bag.

  “Really? That’s it?” Cobi said, his eyebrows raised in disappointment. “It’s only eight o’clock.”

  “I live in Shiloh, so it’s a whole process getting home and I have to get ready for the interview.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cobi murmured. “You’re not upset at me or anything, are you?”

  “Nah, it’s all good,” Gaby said. “See you tomorrow.”

  Cobi nodded, and Gaby tapped Tali on the shoulder to say goodbye. Tali gave her a hug and asked loudly, “You’re going already?”

  Gaby explained again about needing to get back to Shiloh and walked toward the door, reaching for her phone and adjusting her bag. Just as she was about to leave the bar, someone tapped her shoulder. She turned quickly, thinking it was Cobi or Tali wanting to tell her something, but it wasn’t.

  It was Saar.

  He stood in front of her, dressed in a black sweatshirt with sunglasses pushed on top of his head, although it was nighttime and the sun had set hours ago. He had an expectant smile on his face, as if he thought that just because he showed up, they could resume where they had left off months ago.

  Gaby tensed, expecting to feel that powerful rush of attraction she always felt whenever he was near her, but for some reason, she didn’t. This time, all she saw was how skinny he was, and how short his hair was cut.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Are you coming or going?”

  “I’m going. I have work to do.” That’s right, she thought triumphantly. I have real work to take care of.

  “I tried to get in touch with you,” he said with his trademark charming smile.

  Gaby nodded briefly. He really thought she was that easy. Sending one text to his friend’s ex-girlfriend would not be considered trying. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t successful.”

  Gaby nodded, not willing to engage in his flirting.

  Saar touched her arm. “But come have a drink with me. Let’s talk.”

  Gaby smiled. This was incredible. She was finally able to do what she should have done the very first time she saw him, standing by the checkpoint. “I have to go. It was nice seeing you.” And then, with a wave goodbye, she left.

  Outside, the cold air was refreshing against her skin, away from the smell of booze and close press of bodies. Gaby breathed deeply, feeling as if she had just passed a strenuous test. She walked away from the bar, her back straight and her head held high. She didn’t need Saar to make her feel important. She had her job, and the interview tomorrow, and her family, and maybe even Hillel. She could do better than a boy who only had time for her when he wanted something from her.

  Now, all she needed to do was to get home. There was a bus station down the block, but she wasn’t sure if that bus went to the Central Bus Station. She clicked open her phone, thinking she’d call someone to ask, and scrolled quickly through her contacts, until she hit on Hillel’s name.

  She stared at the number, as if those ten digits could prophesize to her, and then with a little smile, pressed talk. Almost immediately, he picked up.

  “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “It’s going good.”

  “I’m excited for shabbat.”

  “Yeah, same here.” She wanted to tell him that she saw Saar and nothing happened, that he didn’t hold a fatal attraction over her anymore, and she didn’t fall all over him like she did before, but this wasn’t the right time. One day, if they ever got back together, she’d tell him the full story.

  “So…”

  “What are you doing now?” Gaby asked, kicking a little stone off the side of the curb. She paused outside an outdoor florist shop and let the heady smell of the flowers engulf her.

  “Nothing much. I’m still on my base.”

  “When are you coming back to Yerushalayim?”

  “On Friday.”

  “Oh.” Gaby bit her lip, hoping he would say the thing she had been waiting for him to say. The colors of the flowers were so vibrant, all the reds and oranges and greens. Maybe she should pick up something for shabbat.

  “What are you up to now?”

  “Nothing. I went out with some people from work, but it was boring. I’m gonna head back to Shiloh now, but I have to figure out how to get to the tachanah.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You can’t leave tonight from the base?”

  “Nope. I can’t leave until Friday. But if you don’t want to go back to Shiloh now, you could stay at my place. ”

  “Really?” Gaby pursed her lips, considering his offer. “Nah, it would be too lonely without you.”

  “But I’ll see you on Friday, right?”

  “Yes, I’ll see you then,” Gaby said, managing not to emphasize the fact that they hadn’t seen each other since that shabbat Hillel came to the kibbutz. “So, we’ll meet up at the bus?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay,” Gaby said, hanging up with a smile. Then she chose a huge bouquet of tiny white roses and went inside to pay.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was not possible there was a more charming little cottage in the entire land of Israel. The house was situated at the corner of a leafy street in Ramat Chen, a prosperous suburb of Tel Aviv, with a wooden hand-painted sign that welcomed visitors to the Rubin home.

  Gaby pushed open a black wrought iron gate and followed a pebbled stone path winding through a neat garden. Three wide brick-red steps led to a blue-tiled door frame that supported a thick wooden door, polished to a deep shine. The single-story stucco house was painted in a brick red, the window shutters in black.

  Gaby rang the bell near t
he door and heard the chime ring through the house. She waited a minute and rang the bell again.

  Here in Ramat Chen, less than an hour drive from the cold that still covered Jerusalem, the weather was a pleasant seventy-two degrees, and Gaby shrugged off her cream woolen pea coat. A sound came from the side of the house, and she wondered if it would be too intruder-like to go see if Lee was in the back.

  “You only live once,” she said to herself, remembering Rikky’s words that long-ago night in Mamilla and went to investigate around the side. The backyard was more practical than pretty, with trees of some type of fruit and plots of what looked like vegetables.

  As Gaby looked closer to figure out exactly what type of fruit was growing on a twisted tree closest to her, she noticed a shrunken, fragile, elderly lady sitting by a white patio table and sipping from a yellow mug, shaded by the other side of the tree, a newspaper propped up in front of her. Her pure-white hair was cut short, and she was dressed in a white flowered housecoat. Lemons floated in a pitcher of lemonade, and store-bought cookies were neatly arranged on a blue plate and set on the table. She looked up as Gaby approached, giving her a welcoming smile.

  “Hello,” Lee said. “You must be Gaby.” She spoke in soft, measured tones, as if each word was precious.

  “Yes,” Gaby said, automatically matching her tone.

  “Come, come sit.” Lee patted the chair next to her. She poured Gaby a glass of lemonade and pushed the plate of cookies toward her.

  Gaby sat and carefully took a sip of the lemonade. It was good, chilled and tart. She looked at Lee, who was regarding Gaby with a pensive expression. Gaby smoothed the cover of the folder she had filled with prepared questions. She had decided against using a recorder because she wasn’t completely sure how to use it and she didn’t want Lee to get distracted by the mechanics of the gadget. She wondered if she should just start firing questions away, but Lee seemed more of the calm type, someone who preferred to ease into things gently.

  “What type of name is Gaby?” Lee asked.

  “Um, it’s short for Gruna Brocha,” Gaby said, little embarrassed as usual whenever anyone asked her about her real name.

  “Gruna.” Lee took a sip from her mug thoughtfully. “I haven’t heard that name in a long time. I had a friend growing up named Gruna. It’s a good Eastern European name. Just like my name, Lifsha.”

  “Oh, I was wondering where the name Lee came from,” Gaby paused, considering the coincidence that both she and this elderly woman shared the same old-world origins in their names, a name that dogged her for years and had caused her only grief.

  Every school year, when the teachers would go through roll-call and stumble over Gaby’s full name, all the girls would snicker and Gaby would have to say, yet again, that she preferred to go by Gaby. But at last, her shtetl-ish name finally seemed to give her an edge. A Gruna speaking to a Lifsha gave them some common ground.

  “I was named after someone who lived in Poland,” Gaby offered, trying to get the conversation going.

  “Is that so?”

  This seemed to be a good way to segue into the topic at hand. “She was a little girl who died in the Holocaust. Her sister was my mother’s cousin, and she asked my mother to give me the name. My mother added Brocha to my name because the original Gruna died young.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. May you be a merit to her memory.”

  Gaby smiled. “Thanks. What about your friend, Gruna? What happened to her?”

  “Gruna. A sweet girl. You know, I can’t say. We lost touch over the years as it tends to happen.”

  “What about your brothers and sisters?” Gaby asked. “Did they also have such… interesting names?”

  “Ethnic names? No, they had more typical biblical names, like Devorah and Sima. I was the lucky one. But you know how it was in those days. We all Americanized our names. Yus became Joe, Miriam became Mickey, Rivka was Ruthie.” Lee looked upwards as she brought to mind the names of her siblings, and Gaby watched her, astonished. How many kids were there?

  “We were ten children,” Lee explained, seeing Gaby’s face. “Now, of course, we are no longer all here, but we were once ten.” She smiled patiently, allowing Gaby to take the lead.

  Gaby swallowed. Why did Elanit think she was good at this? She had no idea what to ask. Everything she had written down seemed either tedious or intrusive. She flipped a page, hoping for some inspiration.

  Lee took pity on her and, placing a hand on Gaby’s arm, launched into her tale of how her father and mother came over as teenagers from Galicia, Poland. They wed, and began their married life in the famed Lower East Side neighborhood of New York. Lee was the oldest of ten children, four boys and six girls. Her father, Shlomo, was fond of saying that with every child, he would get a raise in his salary.

  Shlomo worked long hours as a typesetter for the Jewish Daily Forward, but money was tight. They never needed welfare, and there was always food on the table, but nevertheless, with limited resources, Lee was forced to leave school after eighth grade and go to work to help provide for the family. She began her career as a secretary first for Hapoel Mizrachi, a Zionist party focusing on young adults, and then later for the National Council of Young Israel, a coordinating agency for a large number of Orthodox synagogues. Times, Lee was quick to point out, were very different then.

  “The young ones,” Lee looked directly at Gaby, who flushed as if she did something wrong, “don’t appreciate how easy they have it now. My father wanted to go to medical school, but when he found out he would have to work on shabbos, he decided against it. People don’t have to make those kinds of choices today.”

  Gaby nodded in agreement.

  “Life was difficult growing up. More accurately, it was difficult for me. I have to tell you a funny story,” Lee chuckled. “I was visiting my sister Mickey, she was living in Arizona at that time, and she had a neighbor over, her name was…” Lee looked to the side, trying to bring the name to memory. “Hmm, I can’t quite remember. Anyway, this woman had also grown up on the Lower East Side, and Mickey and she were comparing stories. Mickey was saying how she had the best childhood, filled with laughter and love, so many happy memories, and I’m looking at her and I’m insisting, no, no, it was miserable! We were so poor, and we had to work so hard… and the woman was saying, did you two grow up in the same household?” Lee laughed at the memory. “But Mickey was much younger than me, so she had a different experience than I did.”

  Gaby laughed in agreement. “I know. My younger brother and I definitely grew up very differently from each other.”

  Then, as if Lee heard an unspoken prompt, she got back to the subject at hand. “Right, you want to know about the letters.”

  “Well, not just that, I want to know all about your experiences during the war. What was it like for you when there was all this chaos across the ocean?”

  “Let’s see. My mother had siblings that were still in Europe and they sent us letters, asking for help. My mother had all her sisters that were in New York come to our apartment for monthly meetings to see what could be done to help and to send them money. I was the secretary,” Lee smiled proudly. “My family is very close, which is unusual for a large family like ours, but perhaps, this was the beginning of our family solidarity. All the cousins came over for those meetings, and we got to know everyone, and we loved each other very much. We accepted everyone for how they were. Some of us kept that mentality, and some of us didn’t, but the unity was a very beautiful thing.”

  Gaby nodded, thinking of her own family’s lack of unity, not to mention her father’s abandonment of his parental obligations. Her grandparents, in their own stiff, formal way, had tried to help when they were alive, having the kids over for shabbos and buying Gaby school uniforms. But her grandparents had died a couple of years ago, and her aunts and uncles had only feigned slight interest in the struggles of the Kupfer family. Nothing like the concern and help that seemed to be readily available since they were living in Shi
loh.

  “So what happened to the cousins in Europe?”

  “They were killed,” Lee said, matter-of-factly.

  “Oh,” Gaby said, taken aback by her frankness.

  “Isn’t this a lovely garden?” Lee asked, as if she had been speaking about plants, not about the murder of her relatives. She poured Gaby another drink of lemonade. “My husband planted these trees. That’s a mango tree, and that’s a lemon tree.”

  “Did the lemons in the lemonade come from that tree?”

  “Yes, they did. Isn’t it delicious?”

  “Mmm,” Gaby said, drinking from her glass and wondering if Lee was finished with her tale.

  “Come with me,” Lee said. She got up and reached for the carved wooden cane leaning against the table. Gaby stuck her folder into her bag and followed, walking slowly right behind Lee, just in case she might need assistance.

  Lee walked cautiously, her back bent with old age. She opened the screen door into a yellow and white kitchen, which despite being crowded with every appliance imaginable, was pristine, not a crumb or a mark on the counters. They passed an elegant if old-fashioned dining room, with curio cases filled with little silver trinkets, artifacts and African masks lined up on the beige-papered wall, and an immaculate living room, modern-looking with a freshly vacuumed tan carpet, comfortable recliners, and a large TV.

  She led Gaby to a small green room, the four walls and ceiling painted the same sage color, with shelves and bookcases against the walls. Letters, newspapers, and books filled every shelf and were stacked horizontally wherever there was space. A large flat screen computer sat on a meticulously organized desk.

  Lee sat down on a brown office chair, and handed Gaby a large binder filled with plastic-protected inserts. “Here we go. This is the correspondence I had with my brothers and family members when they were in the army.”

  “Wow,” Gaby said. “They are in perfect condition.”