FELA AND HINDA DID not make a good impression on each other. Fela put out her hand when they met, and Hinda seemed not to notice it. Pavel saw, and a protest welled up in his throat: Hinda! he wanted to cry. But he said nothing, watching Fela start back in surprise.
The rest of their hour together was stiff, labored. Kuba, Hinda’s intended, at the last minute had been obliged to attend to some business. Hinda entered the little house alone, delivered by a car that had been dispatched by Pavel. Now it was up to Pavel to move the conversation.
All right, Pavel thought. At least Kuba did business, unlike those refugees who slept all day in the barracks of the DP camp, moving about in a state of apathy, refusing to get up and work or even talk. But the meeting, which had been arranged so Pavel could assess Kuba, instead became a chance for Hinda to judge Fela. And here was Hinda, sullen and haughty, just as she had been years ago when their father married their stepmother, just as she had been when she had seen, by chance, Pavel in the street with a girl. Years ago.
You smoke too much, said Hinda, watching Fela strike another match.
Who did not smoke? It kept down the hunger. It gave the body the illusion of warmth. Few of the refugees had given it up. In fact Hinda smoked also; she had brought her own cigarettes.
Kuba has a good contact, Hinda said. He is so blond, it is easy for him to move around. He gets French ones, sometimes. I try to be careful; it is not so ladylike to smoke so much.
Fela blew out a puff from her mouth. The smoke came out in two little circles. Often when she did that, even as a joke, Pavel thought she looked like a film actress. But now he didn’t. He was worried. He said, We all smoke.
He knew it was not an adequate answer. He could feel Fela’s anger in the caress she gave his hand, which rested on the table, holding his own cigarette. She did not touch him in front of others, but now, in front of Hinda, she wanted to throw off her restraint. Her gesture had an effect: Hinda looked coldly at the two of them and said, Not all of us smoke so much.
Pavel and Fela retained a modesty in public, acting as friends, perhaps cousins. For what would others think of him, not marrying a beautiful Jewish girl with whom he shared a bed? Yet the explanation was even worse—that Fela still looked for her husband. So they were discreet, and they depended on Chaim—who had moved into Fela’s room—to keep quiet himself. What did others need to know about their living arrangements? They had their own dwellings to worry about.
Yet here was Fela, openly touching, her pale fingers rubbing his knuckles. Was she taunting his sister, or perhaps him? He did not know. Pavel was relieved—no, not relieved, he thought, just tired, just ready to rest—when Chaim hopped off Fela’s bicycle and bounded into the garden, giving Hinda a tip of the cap as she stood up to leave.
PAVEL BROUGHT CHAIM WITH him to meet this Kuba near Munich. It was better that way, men among men. Kuba stayed with a friend from his childhood in a bare apartment only moderately clean. Pavel sniffed a bit when he came in. Even without a woman living in the home, one had to make attempts! His sister’s intended did not seem to waste money on luxuries. But Kuba was friendly, a round pink face atop a small body, neatly dressed in gray trousers and a dark jacket, and he shook Pavel’s and Chaim’s hands with vigor.
Kuba too had thought to have an observer. His friend Marek brought glasses from the kitchen, and they sat down in the front room with a bottle of schnapps, a gift from Pavel. Chaim unpacked from his satchel a bundle of American cigarettes.
Marek took a cigarette first. He lit it with a match, then passed the light on his cigarette to Pavel’s. All this travel just to take a look at the sister’s groom, yes? That is a loyal brother.
Was he making fun? No, Pavel decided. He breathed out. She is all I have, he said.
Kuba interjected. She talks of you like a hero. Smuggling letters between work camps. Sending her packages in Foehrenwald, even before you knew for sure she was alive. Then travel through the Russian zone to get to the American!
Pavel coughed, suddenly nervous. She is all I have, he repeated.
More than many of us, nodded Marek.
A silence.
Chaim said, We make the wedding in our house. Fela already plans for the meal.
Pavel threw him a look—should it be given away so quickly that Kuba had passed Pavel’s scrutiny?—then looked back at Kuba with a grave face.
I see you must make good business, if you live outside a camp.
Marek and Kuba exchanged glances. We get along all right, said Kuba. We have our own connections. No doubt different from yours—
Marek interrupted. We don’t have a car, that is for sure!
The two of them laughed, and Pavel joined in.
Coffee, said Pavel, is better than diamonds.
Chaim took a short sip from his glass. The car was borrowed, but it was true, Pavel had plans to make a purchase of something used; it would give them more freedom than bicycles.
And we do not have British papers, continued Kuba. It makes a difference to have them. Hinda says you have both.
Pavel smiled. Should you believe everything Hinda says? The three men laughed again.
Young to be a partner in such a business, eh? said Marek, looking at Chaim. His broad cheeks had reddened with the schnapps.
Not so young, said Chaim.
Smart, said Pavel. He already teaches in the Belsen school. Everyone talks about him.
It’s not exactly teaching, Chaim interjected. I help with—
In any case, said Kuba, I want to marry your sister. I want to make something more than we make here. There is nothing for us here, business or no business. Nothing.
Pavel nodded. This Kuba thought ahead. There is nothing here, he agreed.
We went back to Kielce together, said Marek. We thought—I wanted to see my parents’ bakery, I wanted some message—I thought in the Jewish community center—
You can imagine, said Kuba. You can imagine.
You cannot imagine, said Marek, his voice suddenly louder. You cannot imagine! After everything—Kuba does not know—I can see where you were, and he was not where we were, my friend—he does not know, but after everything, to come back and to have them massacring us again! We ran to the American zone so fast we left what little we had in our houses. Worse than before! I hate Poles more than Germans. I hate them more! Marek was shouting, his thin brown hair flapping over his forehead. I hate them more! At least here we have the chance to see the Germans hungry and defeated! There they live on our property and grow fat and they are delighted, overjoyed that we are gone! It is heaven for them. A little heaven.
Another silence. Kuba patted his friend’s shoulder. I just wanted Pavel to know that I will leave here at the first opportunity, the first chance.
But until then, sighed Marek.
Until then, continued Kuba, we would like to invite you into our business. You have connections, we have connections. We have crossed borders without papers before.
Pavel looked at them, thin Marek with his eyes almost running with tears, small Kuba with his blond, sunny face. They did not have papers for the British zone. But Pavel did. He had everything. Perhaps he could help them. He had money, he had stones. Not as good as identity papers, but almost as good.
I participate in the Jewish Committee of the British zone, Pavel said. I will see what can be done.
IN THE ROUNDHOUSE, THE speeches of the leaders and the mutterings of their followers became more and more desperate and furious. Yidl Sheinbaum, accepting his reelection to the head of the committee, cried out about the cruelties of the British foreign minister and the hopelessness of the American Congress. We have crossed the Red Sea! he shouted. But still we are in the desert! Should we wait forty years?
It was true, Pavel thought, clapping angrily with the rest. They had been slaves in Egypt and still had not found their freedom. The outside world busied itself with more important things than the suffering of the Jewish remnants. They were all on the lists to emigrate with
the Joint and the International Red Cross and HIAS; they all hoped for America, of course, and they all came to the demonstrations for the British to open Palestine, though the life when they got there! They had heard the hunger was worse than in Germany. A few refugees managed to have relatives sponsor them to emigrate outside the quotas, and they left at the first chance of sea passage. No, not even the most powerful people in the world wanted to give them a place to live in peace, to seek home, not just refuge.
Still, Pavel had wanted an American for the wedding ceremony of his sister. He had faith in the Americans. He brought in his future brother-in-law and his friend to stay in his house a few days, and organized for them papers—legitimate ones!—and new ration cards. In gratitude, Marek offered to make arrangements—he had contacts. A lady friend knew some of the chaplains in the American zone in Bremen. Pavel did not want to ask too many questions. What a surprise for his sister it would be, a symbol of the new world to bring her into marriage. And as for entertainment, Chaim seemed to know a teacher connected with a group of musicians, hungry people who would be happy to travel out to the house for a reasonable fee.
FELA DID NOT LOVE to cook. She loved to bake. Three sponge cakes and a platterful of cookies had been ready since early in the morning, and there was nothing for her to do but boil the cabbage for the chopped meat. Pavel had expressed a wish for stuffed cabbage, but she was doubtful about the quality of the meats he had managed to find. The strong heat interrupted her concentration. Truth be told, she thought it a waste to cook a meat dish for the guests. She did not want to postpone any longer, but she thought that instead of beginning the cabbage she could perhaps work on to a small rack of turnovers with the basket of apples Chaim had brought home the night before. To keep the meal kosher, she could substitute a bit of oil for the butter in the pastry. Or should she just forgo the meat altogether? There was not so much that one could be sure every guest would have enough. Would it not be better to avoid the awkwardness and shame, to present the guests instead with the products of the flour of which they had plenty? No meat at all! It would be easy to sell it again before it went bad. Turnovers, cheese puffs, even another sponge cake, these would be plentiful, and would keep if for some reason the guests did not finish.
Sweating a bit as she sliced the apples, Fela heard the door open and close, Pavel’s nervous chatter, Chaim’s laugh, the voice that quavered between boyhood and adulthood. A stream of humid summer air pushed through the kitchen, mixing with the odor of warm cake. Kuba was not to arrive for another two hours, and the guests would be even later. There was time.
She had prepared for Hinda a little area in Chaim’s bedroom to arrange her hair and to wash, with a little soap and cream and tweezers, all from the cosmetology class she took in the camp. Fela would dress in her own room. They did not feel a warmth toward each other. Hinda was still a girl. A bitter girl, but a girl. She had never been with a man at all, Fela surmised, not even Kuba. No doubt Hinda disapproved of the morals in the house, but Fela thought she could detect in Hinda’s manner not just disdain but awe. Hinda’s body had suffered. Hinda had experienced what all of them had experienced and more, the emptying of the mind of any thought unrelated to physical survival, the obsession, the mania of hunger and cold—and no doubt beatings, perhaps even tortures. But Hinda did not have what Fela had, a memory inside the body, a hidden cabinet of womanhood. And there was no one for Hinda to ask, to consult, no one with whom she could worry and laugh, as she might have with a sister, or a mother, even a girlfriend from school. Yes, thought Fela. Inside that coldness, Hinda felt awe. She resented Fela the way a child would resent an adored brother’s blooming new wife, and Fela was acting, after all, the part of Pavel’s wife.
More than acting. Fela felt that she was not performing a lie but living another life, a life next to her old one, the life of a twin. Sometimes she thought Pavel could see the twin next to her—in the evenings, when they smoked, or at night, when he touched the belly roughened by childbirth. But if he saw, he chose to ignore the twin. She did not ask him questions, and he did not ask her. She knew he assumed she had been married legitimately, by a rabbi, and she did not discourage his assumption. It seemed to her she had not been his first love, either. He too had a twin. And the twins watched them, each night, each morning, as they drew aside the curtains in their wallpapered bedroom or as they wrapped their heads in scarves before riding to their English class in the camp. Her mouth and face and hands felt new to her. She occasionally felt a flash of unsureness, as if the body working at eating and lovemaking was not completely hers.
But now it was she, Fela, cooking, baking, moving her hands through a busy but clean kitchen. She had crossed the border into this new body, after a time of being stateless, after a time of being no one, alone with only a memory of who she was, daughter, sister, lover, mother. She would pass into this new life. It was all right. She had crossed the border.
THE MUSICIANS ARRIVED ALL at once, in a line, almost marching. A man with a black-market violin—he once had played cello; a woman flutist, whose cheeks seemed puffed for a trumpet; and two men with identical wide guitars. Guitars, of all things! Pavel was not sure he had seen one outside of pictures. Rayzele had mentioned some kind of horn, a quiet horn, she said, but no one appeared with one. Still, this was more than satisfactory.
Pavel was wearing a plain dark jacket and trousers, made from thin Swiss wool. The others would arrive in their charity suits from America, used and mismatched. Pavel’s shirt was pressed stiff, and his hair had been clipped in the barbershop of the DP camp. The red-and-brown skullcap he wore had been knitted by Rayzele, a gift.
Waiting for the rabbi and guests as the women prepared the table and the musicians took a bite to eat, Pavel and Chaim played cards. Chaim was good, but not so good. Pavel took pity occasionally, dropping a card he could see the boy wanted.
The men with guitars chatted with Kuba. The flutist held back, nervously cutting bits of dark bread into her hand and hopping them into her mouth, like a bird.
The rabbi arrived in a soldier’s uniform, with three other men from the American zone in Bremen. Pavel jumped up when Rayzele came to tell him. It was starting! He felt a chill of excitement. Not warmth in his heart, not quite, but movement, a flutter of leaves at his ribs. A marriage. It seemed like a folktale, a story from outside his lifetime. But no! It was a normal event, part of the everyday.
The men withdrew to the sitting room downstairs to prepare the contract. The rabbi sat himself down at the center of the narrow table, Pavel standing behind him. Had he ever been witness to a signing? Perhaps as a child he had seen something like this, with the door ajar, the thin curtains flapping from the autumn garden, the smell of chicken boiling in the kitchen, the taste of apple cake stuck to the roof of his mouth, he had taken a piece without asking and no one had seen. His grandfather—
He called to Chaim. The boy should see.
But something was happening. A mutter, a flurry. From his place behind the table, Pavel floated back from his grandfather’s house to the room in Celle, to the half-frowning faces staring at the rabbi, whose words Pavel could not quite make out.
He concentrated. The rabbi was saying: Yes, yes, but how do I know? What do I know about them?
Pavel forced his mind on the figure of Marek, who observed the rabbi and Pavel with a weary sneer.
The rabbi went on, in stilted Yiddish, with a few Russian words thrown in: They say we are in the family’s house, but there are no documents. How should I know that her mother was Jewish? And we have nothing on the man, who looks as Jewish as the Pope. Now how can I perform—
Excuse me—Pavel interrupted—excuse me—
You understand—
Excuse me! Pavel turned to face the front of the man. He peered at the rabbi’s mouth, as if to change the words coming out. What are you saying? You are saying you don’t think we are Jewish? After all we’ve been through?
It’s not what I think, it’s the issue of docum
ents—
Documents! We—documents—
Calm, calm, whispered Chaim.
But Pavel could not breathe. The words in Yiddish came out in chipped pebbles. My sister—how—brother—musicians—so much food! Around him the men were still, watching him.
And then, from the silence, soft tones of that odd sound, English. It was Chaim’s voice, the voice of a growing boy, and his words seemed to Pavel to flow easily: “Perhaps, Rabbi, you do not understand. Our documents are ashes. In smoke. In the sky.”
The rabbi’s face turned stiff. “Yes, yes. Of course.”
Pavel breathed again.
But the rabbi continued, returning to Yiddish. It’s a question of my—you know, I must prove that I know, and how can I know? There is no proof. No certificates. I understand, but how can I show it? I have certain obligations, not just to the rabbinate, to the army—
Come, Mr. Chaplain, said Pavel, forcing a smile. Sit with me for a glass of schnapps. I have a fresh bottle for you to take back to your family in America—
No thank you.
Or to your friends in the barracks—
I said no.
Pavel looked down and saw his fingers folding and unfolding. The muscles in his arms had extended. He knew that his chin was out and his lips were trembling over his teeth. This was impossible! The musicians were here. He had paid a small fortune, for travel, for food for what was it?—thirty guests! God in heaven would laugh if he still had the nerve. A rabbi, an American, but an idiot.
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