Day After Night

by Anita Diamant

  Leonie thought it was a good thing that the children didn’t know enough Hebrew to understand what she was saying, otherwise, they might have thought that the plump woman with the odd bun and the yellow teeth wanted to devour them, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

  “Don’t worry,” whispered Aliza, as she readied the hypodermics. “We’ll take care of your little problem after we finish with the babies.”

  Leonie was relieved and mortified. As much as she hated for Aliza to know about her problem, at least she would be cured before Shayndel grew more suspicious.

  The first little girl to get a shot burst into shrill tears, which set the entire group to wailing. Their cries grew louder and more inconsolable, and nothing, not even the promise of candy, could make them stop. Each child struggled and shrieked more than the one before and Leonie began to feel like a monster, pinning arms back as Aliza came at them with the needle. Finally, the last one was inoculated and the children were led out, tears drying on their cheeks as they sucked on lollipops from America.

  “I saved two red ones for us,” said Aliza, putting one into her mouth as she offered the other to Leonie. They tidied the room in silence, white paper sticks between their lips. Leonie glanced at the nurse, hoping she would return to the conversation about her problem, when a half dozen sweaty boys barged in, all shouting at the same time—a shrill mishmash of Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, and Romanian.

  At the center of the racket was a pale, slender child whose face was covered in blood. “He fell making the goal,” said one of the older boys. “I told them he was too small to play with us, but he whined and begged until we let him. And then he fell and he hit his head.”

  “Where is he?” came a woman’s voice from outside. “Danny? Are you all right?”

  Leonie didn’t recognize her at first. Tirzah must have been washing her hair, which was still damp and hung halfway down her back, brown with golden streaks. In the kitchen, it was all bundled into a thick black net, which made her look older and more severe than the beautiful, distraught woman reaching for her son.

  “I will not have this madness in my clinic,” said Aliza, at the top of her lungs. “Leonie, get rid of these wild animals right now.”

  Leonie grabbed the box of lollipops and waved it over the boys’ heads. “Outside for a treat,” she announced, and they followed, as eager and as docile as the toddlers.

  When she returned, Danny was lying on a cot with Tirzah beside him, her hand on a large white compress covering most of his forehead.

  “It was just a little cut,” Aliza said to Leonie. “It only looked bad because it was on the scalp, which always bleeds like crazy.”

  Tirzah frowned, dubious about the nurse’s breezy diagnosis. Then again, she frowned about almost everything.

  The inmates were glad when Tirzah’s son visited from a kibbutz somewhere in the south. Danny’s monthly trips meant there would be a cake at least once during his stay. His presence also spiced up conversations at meals, as newcomers engaged in ever-more-outlandish speculations about the chilly woman who ran the kitchen for the Jewish Agency. She wore no wedding ring; did that mean Danny was a bastard? Perhaps she was a widow. Or maybe her husband divorced her for the way she oversalted her soup—or for fooling around with another man.

  Danny was a sweet kid, a skinny seven-year-old who had his run of the camp and spent his days playing with whatever children happened to be there. When they were very young, he organized games of jacks or tag, but when there was a group of boys his age or older, he pushed himself into their races and matches.

  Tirzah stroked her son’s cheek. “Doesn’t he need stitches? When is the doctor coming?”

  “There is nothing for the doctor to do,” Aliza said crisply. “The bleeding stopped and the cut is right at the hairline so you won’t even see the scar, if there is one.

  “Here, Danny,” Aliza said, taking a piece of chocolate from her desk drawer. “Have some candy. You were a brave boy. Do you think we should give one to your mother? She was not nearly as brave as you.”

  There was a knock at the open doorway followed by a question in English. “Everything all right in here?”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Aliza.

  “Colonel,” Tirzah corrected her.

  “The boy?”

  “He is fine.”

  Colonel John Bryce, the British commander of Atlit, removed his hat and stepped inside. A short man in polished boots, he made a little bow to Aliza.

  “Does he need the doctor?” he asked in Hebrew.

  “No. He is fine,” Aliza said.

  The officer looked at Danny. “Are you fine?”

  Danny smiled and replied in English, “I am very good, indeed.”

  The inmates hated John Bryce solely on principle. He was not a vindictive or petty man and he permitted the Jewish Agency free rein within the camp. Even so, he was considered a prig and a fool for his insistence on following rules to the letter, often causing delays and complications a more lenient commander might have avoided.

  Not much was known about him; he was a career officer in his late forties, his skin deeply lined from years of service in India. He had fought in North Africa during the war against Germany and was ending his career in Palestine.

  His feeling for Tirzah was so obvious that Leonie had to turn away, embarrassed and a bit envious. She thought it extraordinarily romantic that he had risked exposing himself by rushing to her side this way. Tirzah kept her eyes on Danny, so it was not easy to read her face.

  “Well, then,” said Colonel Bryce, finding there was nothing for him to do. “Carry on.”

  Aliza took another look at Danny’s wound and secured a much smaller bandage over it. “It looks very dramatic,” she said, pinching his cheek. “The girls will swoon over you.

  “Keep him still for the rest of the day and send him to me in the morning for a quick check,” she said to Tirzah. “And don’t make too much of this. Boys will be boys. They smash themselves up and they heal. Don’t smother him.”

  After everyone left and Leonie began to sweep up, Aliza asked, “So, tell me. Is the pain sharp? In the lower abdomen? Do you have a sore throat?”

  “How do you know all of that?”

  “It’s my job to know,” she said, and motioned for Leonie to go behind the curtain. A moment later she appeared with a hypodermic. “Turn around,” she said and lifted Leonie’s skirt. “I’ll give you another shot in a few days.”

  “Thank you,” Leonie whispered.

  “No need,” Aliza said. “Come outside. I need a smoke.”

  They sat on the bench on the shady side of the shed and shared a cigarette in silence. After a short while, Aliza said, “I could never do what Tirzah is doing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean? Fucking for her country!” Aliza smirked. “I shock you, do I? How old are you, anyway? Seventeen?”

  “Almost eighteen.”

  “I suppose I look like an old lady to you, but if she is thirty-five, I am only ten years older, which isn’t too old, if you know what I mean. Besides, I know what goes on in the world.” She took a long drag on the cigarette and shook her head. “I suppose women have always been asked to do this kind of thing. You can get a man to tell you almost anything in bed. But by now, Tirzah must be an expert about the British prison authority and maybe something about the police department, too. Still, for a Jewish woman to have to stoop so low? It makes me sick.

  “Of course, when you really stop to think about it, she deserves a medal and a pension, just like any other soldier. What a sacrifice. What a shame.”

  Leonie said nothing but she wondered whether Aliza might have misjudged the situation. Bryce was obviously in love with her. Danny was fond of him. As for Tirzah? Leonie guessed and thought, Poor woman.

  II September

  Rosh Hashanah, September 7

  Tirzah had let it be known that the evening meal that started the Jewish New Year would be specia
l, so speculation about the menu had become a topic of discussion and debate.

  “There is a big argument about the proper ingredients for carrot tzimmes,” said Shayndel as she reached for another potato from the mountain before her.

  Tirzah, who was chopping a bowl of onions, made no reply.

  “I think there’s even a wager about whether there will be sweet or savory noodle kugel.”

  Shayndel thought she heard Tirzah laugh. “What?” she asked. But the cook only continued chopping.

  Usually, Shayndel didn’t mind Tirzah’s reserve. In the three weeks since she’d begun working in the kitchen, she had found it a relief to spend time with someone who did not treat her with kid gloves. After David told the men in his barrack that she had been a partisan fighter, everyone except Leonie had stopped acting normal around her—no more joking or gossiping now that she was considered a champion of the resistance, a heroine of the Jewish people.

  The tales of her exploits got grander with every retelling: she was said to have single-handedly killed a dozen Nazi soldiers in a machine-gun bunker; she had walked into a Polish police station in broad daylight to steal identity papers; she had rescued scores of families moments before the Germans had come to arrest them.

  There was some truth to all of the stories—especially the one about the police station theft—but there were holes in them, too. She had been too stubborn to admit that she couldn’t throw as far as the boys, and tossed the hand grenade so badly that Wolfe had put himself in the line of fire to retrieve it and pitch it into the gunner’s nest. Still mortified by that fiasco, which had nearly cost all of them their lives, she refused to talk about any of her wartime experiences. But her reticence was taken as a proof of modesty, which made her stock rise even higher.

  Shayndel began to spend more time in the kitchen, where she could count on Tirzah to be as curt and bracing as horseradish. The room was narrow and cramped. There was a large army cookstove and piles of battered, burned pots and pans—enough to accommodate the Jewish laws that separate meat and dairy. The sink was far too small for all of the washing-up. Tirzah kept the space as clear and uncluttered as possible, without so much as a stool that might tempt a person to sit down and linger over a mug of tea.

  Shayndel worked hard in the kitchen, chopping and washing, but wished she could do more as Tirzah’s agent in Atlit. Occasionally the cook inquired about a new arrival, but mostly Tirzah wanted details about the guards: which men slept on duty and which were easily bribed, who had a wife and children at home, who was smitten by which of the Atlit girls.

  Shayndel was to report any changes in any of their schedules. She learned all the guards’ names and was surprised to find out that not all of the Arabs were Muslims; several were Christians. But it had been two weeks since she learned anything new. Her “spying” became as routine as clearing tables and sweeping the floors, and she wished Tirzah would confide in her about what other kind of information the Palmach was looking for; maybe then she could be more useful.

  Shayndel sighed as she picked up another potato, wishing she had some shocking morsel of news that would jolt Tirzah into conversation. But even the gossip from the barrack was stale. Traffic into Atlit had slowed to a trickle, which had prompted Arik to spend a good part of his last Hebrew class complaining that the Mossad Le’aliyah Bet—the committee for secret immigration—was doing a bad job of procuring seaworthy vessels. The few ships that did manage to limp to shore near Tel Aviv and Haifa were old, slow, and easily captured. The passengers resisted, singing Zionist songs as they raised sticks and fists at British troops armed with bayonets. The Mossad encouraged these doomed displays, supplying banners that read, “The Nazis killed us. The British won’t let us live.” The pictures ran in the London and New York newspapers as well as in Jerusalem.

  Shayndel dug the eyes out of another potato and glanced over at Tirzah, now stirring the onions in a huge frying pan. She was a handsome woman, whose age showed only in the lines around her eyes. Trim and strong, she took big strides as she walked around the compound. No one knew anything about her except that she had a son and that she slept with Bryce, the camp commander.

  Potato after potato after potato, Shayndel grew so bored that she decided to provoke Tirzah into talking. “I heard someone lost an eye when the Montrose landed,” said Shayndel. “Do you think it’s worth the suffering to those poor people on the boats?”

  Tirzah made no reply.

  “I know the headlines do us some good, but the refugees on those boats are exhausted and sick. It’s sort of cruel.”

  Tirzah shrugged without looking up, so Shayndel tried another tactic. “I think that boys get out of Atlit faster than the girls. I know we need soldiers and farmers, but I thought that women were meant to work side by side with the men in the fields. And aren’t they training girls to fight?”

  “I can’t imagine that little French friend of yours shooting a rifle,” Tirzah said.

  “Well, I can,” Shayndel said quickly, even though Leonie’s hands probably couldn’t manage anything bigger than a pistol.

  “I suppose you know her better than I do. To me she looks like a mental case, but the nurses say that she handles herself well with the sick.”

  “It sounds like you gossip as much as we do.”

  “For us, it isn’t gossip,” Tirzah snapped, making it clear that the conversation was over.

  Shayndel held her tongue for a minute and then changed the subject. “Aren’t we going to make something sweet for the holiday?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Tirzah, a hint of amusement in her voice.

  “What? Oh, tell me! I’d kill for a piece of apple cake. Will there be kuchen? You don’t trust me even with that much information?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “But at the rate you’re going, there won’t be enough potato kugel for even half of the crowd. Go get me a couple of girls who know how to peel vegetables without wasting half of them.”

  Shayndel took off her apron and walked out into the bright sun. It seemed strange to be cooking for Rosh Hashanah in such withering heat. She associated the holiday with cool nights and changing leaves and the smell of her mother’s kuchen.

  Tedi was the first person she saw, sitting on a bench in front of the mess hall, paring her nails. “Can you peel a potato?” Shayndel asked.

  Tedi grinned. “Is that a joke or an insult?”

  “Tirzah sent me out to get some extra hands.”

  “I’m happy to help,” she said. “Actually, I’m happy to do anything at all.”

  The next person Shayndel spotted was Zorah, walking toward the barrack with her head down and her hands in her pockets. Not the best of company, thought Shayndel, but she was in a hurry. “Zorah, we can use some help in the kitchen.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  “So it is an order,” Zorah said, and followed her back to the kitchen.

  When they arrived, they found Tirzah standing beside Tedi.

  “Look at how this girl uses a knife,” she said, picking up a potato skin that had been peeled in a single strip. “At last I have someone who knows what she’s doing.”

  “A compliment from our chef?” Shayndel let the insult pass amid the good feeling and aroma of the holiday kitchen. She wished Leonie were there, too.

  “I was always good with my hands,” Tedi said, as she finished another potato. “I used to make doll clothes at home. My teacher said I should be an artist.”

  “Maybe you’ll become an artist here,” Shayndel said. “A sculptor, perhaps! There must be great art in Eretz Yisrael, don’t you think, Tirzah?”

  Tirzah wiped up the potato skins and threw them into the garbage bin. “There are many more important things to do to insure that Jews will never again be treated like cattle. So there will be a place in the world for people like you.”

  “What do you mean by that?” said Zorah. “‘People like you’?”

&n
bsp; “Nothing,” Tirzah said and turned back to the stove. She found it difficult to face these women. She knew they had suffered unimaginable horrors and wanted to feel more compassion for them. She wished she could embrace them, like the volunteers who came to Atlit purely out of kindness, to cut hair and polish nails, or play with the undersized, nervous children.

  Zorah glared. “People like us,” she repeated. “You think that if you had been there, you would have fought the Germans and saved yourself, and your elderly parents, too. You know nothing about what happened.

  “I want to know where you were when the Germans came for us, year after year. Where were the Allies? Where was your English soldier boyfriend?”

  The only sound came from the big pot of soup on the stove, rattling in a boil against the lid. Tirzah silently cursed herself for having said anything. She tried to limit her exchanges with survivors to the task at hand. She knew only the bare outline of Shayndel’s story, though Tirzah approved of the way she held herself and her willingness to work hard. But Tirzah could not abide the victims—the ones who stared blankly or the ones who spit fire. She was disgusted by their nightmares, their tears, and their horrible tattoos. It was wrong of her, of course. She was ashamed and confused by the anger they brought out in her, and sometimes she thought her assignment in Atlit was a kind of punishment for the hardness of her heart. She had never been easy with people, guarded and aloof even as a child. She married Aaron Friedman only because she was pregnant, and when he walked out two weeks after Danny was born, Tirzah’s family blamed her. She moved to a kibbutz where no one knew her, and refused to speak to her parents or her brother for years.

  “You have no answer to that question, do you?” Zorah smirked. She grabbed another potato as if she were going to strangle it and promptly cut a deep gash into her thumb.

  “No blood on the food,” said Tirzah, handing her a towel. “Go have the nurse see to that.”

  Zorah banged out of the room and the three women worked in silence. Tirzah retreated to the back of the kitchen.