Between Gods: A Memoir (35 page)

It is clear from her voice that she doesn’t think we count as such an exception.

Now I start to cry in earnest, tears rolling down my cheeks faster than I can wipe them away. I give in, and put my face in my hands and sob. I’m overcome with helplessness and despair. I think of Gumper’s words: “Not if I were the last Jew on earth.” And of Lucy’s dream: “Mrs. Liska Pick regrets that she is unable to attend.” Of Marianne’s bare legs in the cattle car. Maybe it’s I who am wrong to want to go back there. I could push Degan more, help him wrestle with his doubts. The truth is he would
probably do it for me if I asked him. But I don’t have the energy; I don’t have the comfort or the confidence. I am
different
from the other Jews, who have something concrete, a roof and walls, to invite their new spouse into. My Jewish home is built of straw and grass, of the flimsy cobwebs of dreams.

I look up and blow my nose. Degan holds out a hand for me and puts my snotty tissue in the wastepaper basket. “So you won’t take our case to the Board,” I say to Rachel flatly.

She looks me in the eye and then her gaze moves for a second time down to my belly, straining the waist of my new maternity jeans. I see her face change, a series of emotions moving across it like weather. She sighs and squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them, her eyes are soft. “I will,” she says. “If you want me to.”

I sniff, and nod, surprised. “Really?”

“I will.”

She sees my skepticism. “It might be hard for you to believe,” she says, “but I really do want what’s best for you.”

I remember our first meeting:
What a happy story
.

I nod again, wipe my nose.

“Trust me,” she says. “I’ll represent you well.”

fifteen

A
S MY PREGNANCY PROGRESSES
, my hunger to learn more about my ancestors grows. I find myself wondering about Granny’s parents: her mother, Marianne; her father, Oskar. They, like Vera, lived a life of privilege. In the fall of ’38 and the winter of ’39, they would have met the same string of restrictions Vera described, with the same disbelief: no servants, no radios, a curfew.

In her video interview with Lucy and Dad, Granny doesn’t speak much about her parents—nothing about what they liked, what they were like as people. To evoke them would have led her into a darkness she couldn’t bear. My own depression has retreated in recent months, and I think I understand Granny’s desire to keep it at bay. She does so by sticking to the realm of anecdote in the video, talking about her childhood friend Nena, whose grandfather was ambassador to Argentina. Granny
recounts going to Nena’s house during the occupation and seeing something sticking out from under the sofa.

“I said, ‘What’s that, Mr. Proskowitz?’ And he said, ‘That’s the Nazi flag. I’m supposed to put it out. There’s nobody will make me do that.’ ”

“Like in
The Sound of Music
!” I hear Lucy laugh, invisible to the camera.

Granny continues. “The other thing about Nena was that she had a very heavy—” Granny points to the camera and mock-whispers, “Is that thing on?”

“No,” I can hear my father reassure her, both of them in on the joke.

“She had a very heavy
bust
. When I came back from my honeymoon, I went to see her, and she opened the door and she was naked. She said, ‘Look!’ She’d had the first breast reduction I’d ever heard of.”

Granny is less forthcoming about her own story. It emerges slowly. Her father, Oskar, had a business colleague who was a Nazi, and Oskar used this connection to procure paperwork permitting the family to leave. There was also a Viennese lawyer involved. This lawyer was ennobled two days before the Hapsburg Empire fell and was president of the largest bank in Austria. “He had a beautiful Belgian wife,” Granny says. And then, as an afterthought: “He was a little bit after me.”

On April 24, 1939, with Gumper already out of the country, Granny flew from Prague to Zurich. She had my uncle Michael with her, still in diapers. From Zurich she travelled to Paris, where Gumper met her and then brought her to England. In 1941, they travelled by boat to Canada. Granny expected her parents would meet her there. They never arrived.

Granny says to the camera, “They didn’t believe and they
refused to go until
I
was gone. And then I was gone and they procrastinated. They had visas to Cuba. I was sure they were in Cuba when we arrived in Canada. Only, they weren’t. By that time …” She trails off.

“They procrastinated,” she says again. “They just wouldn’t go. I remember my father saying, ‘What do you expect me to do? Sit in a lobby of a hotel for the rest of my life?’ ”

On October 12, 1941, Oskar and Marianne were transported from Prague to Theresienstadt.

When I try to imagine them there, my mind skitters away from the horrible things I know. Instead, I see another story, the one Granny told my cousins, the one she must have used herself, late at night, thinking of Marianne: her beloved mother, dirty but healthy, her head wrapped in a paisley kerchief, looking after the chickens.

Then on January 20, 1943, Oskar and Marianne were transported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

Here it becomes harder to find another story.

Joseph Mengele did not arrive in Auschwitz until April of that year, so it was not “the Angel of Death” who met them on the platform but some other monster.

Our family lore has it that they went “straight to the gas.”

I strain and strain for an image of Marianne. I can see her laughter, her face tipped up to her male companion:
Stuckerl
—“piece of work.” I picture her arm thrown around Granny’s shoulder. That she was a woman, like my own sister, my cousins, like
me
, full of failure, full of feeling, does not make her easier to imagine.

It occurs to me that as Marianne went to her death, she would have assumed her own children were safe—her son in the United States, Granny in Canada—and in that there’s a small shred of mercy.

sixteen

T
HE SPRING PASSES QUICKLY
, like the pages of a calendar in a silent movie blowing away in the wind. I edit my novel, and feel pleased with my progress. The baby goes through a phase of vigorous hiccuping, the sensation inside me like the quick drawing of breath—only, in my womb instead of my lungs.

Degan and I begin our childbirth classes, where we plunge our hands into buckets of ice and count how many seconds we can tolerate the pain. I have the hazy suspicion that this is a poor approximation of a contraction but don’t bother to articulate this to him. Rachel is set to plead our case in late May, but I am distracted by my sore hips and strange dreams, by the child taking up more of my body and more of my thoughts. Two days after the date passes, I realize I haven’t heard from Rachel.

I email her to ask the verdict.

She writes back right away: “I have good news for you.”

My heart dips and leaps. I’m going to be a Jew.

Degan and I bike up to the synagogue to talk with Rachel in person. She is calm and relaxed again, as though, having navigated through this point of contention, she can now return to the generosity that is so obviously her nature. It’s possible I have never loved anyone more. “You’ll have to decide on a Hebrew name,” she says. “Have you thought about that at all?”

I have. A Hebrew name. For
me
.

“My great-grandmother Ruzenka’s last name was Bondy,” I say. “Which came from
bon dia
in Catalan. Meaning ‘good day.’ Or in Hebrew,
yom tov
.”

She nods.

I pause, suddenly nervous. I take a deep breath. “I thought about taking the
tov
, and being called Tova.”

A smile breaks out on the rabbi’s face. “A beautiful Israeli name. That sounds just about perfect.”

The next task will be a Hebrew name for Dad so I can, as Rachel says, “secure his line.”

Normally a Jewish name references both mother and father. Jordan’s Hebrew name is Shimon ben Michael Anshel V’Tzivia—meaning Michael Anshel is his father and Tzivia is his mother. Shayna’s full Hebrew name is Shayna Gila bat Tziyon Lev V’Chana Rivka. In my case, the name will just reference Dad. I will be Tova, daughter of Thomas. But in place of Thomas we need something Hebrew.

After a handful of emails back and forth, Dad settles on the simple Thom. He seems both pleased and abashed, like a child bestowed an unexpected gift.

For his imminent role as a grandfather, he decides on the
Hebrew word
saba
. I have suggested
zaide
—the Yiddish word I remember Jordan calling his grandpa when we were growing up—but Dad asks his Jewish dermatologist, who tells him
zaide
would be “going overboard.”

But Dad isn’t ashamed.

Better: He’s happy.

On the morning of the
beit din
, I open this email from Dad.

Dear Alison:

Good luck today in your new life as a Jew. I am proud of you, and admire the courage that you have shown in pursuing this venture. Your ancestors up in heaven are applauding!!

Mum joins me in wishing you much happiness and health as well. Love Dad.

P.S. You might want to bring the poem you wrote that refers to Auschwitz and the smoke and ashes etc. I think the Rabbis would be impressed with the depth of your feeling, and also the fact that it was published in Israel.

P.P.S. I’ve just finished a 500 page history of Israel, written by Martin Gilbert. What courage these people showed, and show today, in building their oasis in the sand, against almost universal lack of caring.

P.P.P.S. Remember to bring your poem.

Before the
beit din
, I go get my nails painted red. Then I pick Degan up at work and he quizzes me as we drive north. Rabbi Klein has assured me the questions will be easy, but part of me
expects to be asked about the history of the Temple between 529 and 502 BCE.

“What church do you go to?” Degan asks.

I laugh. “Trick question.”

Moving north on Bathurst, we pass bagel shops, stores where you can buy
tallitot
(prayer shawls) and
neirot
(candlesticks), Orthodox men talking on their cell phones. The Canadian Council of Reform Judaism is housed in a brick building, square and red, unassuming. Inside, we find another couple, also here for the
beit din
, camped outside the third-floor office. The woman pulls on the handle. The door remains closed.

“Is it locked?” I ask.

“They must
really
not want us,” she says.

We laugh, united in our nervousness.

Finally, someone inside the office answers our knock. I’ve been told to expect an assembly line, that today is the big day for all the prospective converts in the city, and true to promise, the tiny waiting room is crammed with people. I notice a woman with red hair who has a lap full of sippy cups and board books and stuffed animals, her daughter plunked on top of the pile like a cherry. I hold my pregnant belly with both hands as I squeeze my way past.

Several people offer me their seat, but I want to stand. Degan leafs through a magazine. My palms are sweaty, and I swallow repeatedly, unable to clear the lump from my throat. I feel someone tap my shoulder and I turn around. It’s Debra. She has just emerged from the boardroom. “They took me!” she says.

“Congrats!” I say. “I mean,
Mazel tov!
”

She smiles.

“What was like it?” I whisper.

“Easy,” she whispers back, and leans in to tell me the questions, but from across the room I hear my name being called. It’s my turn.

I hug Debra, kiss Degan goodbye and follow the secretary through an office jammed with photocopiers and fax machines. There’s the
whiz—thunk! whiz—thunk!
of copies falling into a tray. I enter the boardroom and see three women, the rabbis assigned to my case. Two of them are around my age, one also very pregnant. We exchange conspiring smiles. I exhale. She motions for me to sit down.

The third rabbi is much older, and wearing wire-rimmed glasses in the fashion of a schoolmarm. “What brings you here today?” she asks.

I launch into my family history, beginning with my great-grandparents, Oskar and Marianne. The rabbis shift, clear their throats. The pregnant one heaves herself into a different position. It is clear from their collective body language that they want the abridged version. I sense interest from them, and authenticity, but more overpowering is the feeling that we’re pressed for time.

Their minds are made up already. I’m just not sure in which direction.

“What do you love about Judaism?” the second young rabbi asks.

“Shabbat,” I say right away. I explain, in as few words as possible, about “24 Hours Unplugged.” There’s a collective gasp. I’m encouraged.

“That really sealed the deal for me. Although,” I add hastily, “it’s been clear all along. Like recognizing something that was always mine but got lost along the way, along the generations. Of course there have been challenges, but—”

The rabbi with the wire-rimmed glasses interrupts me. “Tell us about one of those challenges.”

I pause, thinking carefully. “I grew up not knowing very much about Judaism,” I say. “Not knowing
anything
. When I learned my Dad was Jewish, I assumed I could be, too, if I wanted.” I take a wheezy breath, the baby suddenly pressed into my lungs. “Then when I first met Rabbi Klein and she told me that I might not be able to convert, given that my fiancé wasn’t Jewish, I experienced it as …” I pause. “As a kind of rejection.”

The stern rabbi’s face softens and she nods. “It was hard not to take it personally?”

“Yes.”

“I can understand that,” she says, speaking more to the other rabbis than to me.

I look to see if I should say more, but they want to move on.

“Speaking of your marriage, how do you think you’d feel if Degan—” she looks to me to see if she has his name right and I nod “—if Degan changed his mind?”