By Blood (30 page)

How did he know that? said Michal. Among all the things one could say after such a narrow miss with death: Why that? Why the belief that I had saved him?

I never knew. I only knew there was some … potency about the man, some aura that made him seem more than real, charmed. You will see this in all the stories of us survivors: improbable moments like the one I just described, events that turn on luck, on nonsensical holes in the fabric of logic, tears in reality itself. Otherwise, if we had followed the inevitability of normal events, one thing expected to follow another, the way the world works most of the time, we would be dead. There would not be that moment when the guard hesitates. The disgusting tenderness the tormentor feels for the object of his evil deeds—it could not exist. A small, compact man should not be able to take aim with a standard-issue rifle, and, with one clean shot, kill the man determined to kill us.

But so it happened, and we lived.

She paused.

The rioting went on for three days, she continued, her voice now striding on in a faster cadence. Hundreds died by gunfire. Meanwhile thousands died from typhus, from starvation. The kitchen was raided, and people could not be stopped from stuffing down everything they could get their hands on. But their bodies could not digest it all. Many choked. They died. Death by eating—who could imagine such a thing?

The British gave us aid, yes. But they also betrayed us. They had made a deal with the Nazi officers. The Germans did not surrender outright. Instead, the camp had been declared a “neutral zone,” and inside it, the Germans and their Hungarian guards were allowed to remain armed. Armed! The British army’s excuse was typhus, confining the epidemic to the camp. But typhus isn’t spread person to person. Lice spread it; to people confined to lice-infested buildings, like ours. The purpose of the guns was to keep us locked up, to shoot us if we did not behave.

And we did not behave. I should say it was the leader, and those he led, who formed the disciplined core of our misbehavers. I cannot understand how they did it, but within hours of the British soldiers’ arrival, they had captured weapons, taken up positions, gained control over parts of the camp. Who were these men? I asked myself, because I had never before seen such Jews: warlike, organized, tough. They were Polish Zionists, I learned, with lifelong commitments to creating a Jewish state in Palestine, and they had spent all their days training to take it by force, if necessary. These were the men who went on to organize the camp, who eventually joined the Irgun and Hagganah—the Jewish militias that fought the British and the Arabs in Palestine—and who now run Israel: these same warlike, organized, tough men. Whatever Israel is or will become, we have inherited their warrior nature.

She laughed. And look at the trouble it has gotten us into, she said.

There was a long pause.

All during the rioting, she continued, I tried to stay close to the leader. He kept stopping to take aim at the rooftops, where the Hungarians still patrolled, meanwhile trying to calm the half-mad prisoners who were starved and parched and desperate for help, telling them where to assemble, where to find food and water, whom to ask for when they got there. Somehow everyone believed him and trusted in him, and he knew how to express himself with his eyes, his hands, his body, and people did what he told them to do. And I, too, did what he had told me to do: I stayed close. I stuck myself at his side.

So we came to the evening of the third day, Michal went on. At twilight the camp seemed to be stilled: no more gunshots, no more mobs. I had stayed with the leader all this time, and on that third evening we found ourselves in an empty barracks. There was no forethought: Suddenly we grabbed each other. Desire simply exploded from somewhere deep within us. One moment I was overcome with the realization that I was free—my God, free! Alive!—and the next my body demanded its pleasures. Sex! As battered as my body was, I wanted it, wholly, completely. I ached for it: sex, life, which at that moment seemed the exact same thing. The act was quick, hurried, fumbling, greedy. But it was sex. With desire, the first sex I’d had with desire since … everything.

She laughed.

And then he simply buttoned up, walked out, and told some passing men where the food-distribution point could be found.

She paused at length; the tape machine droned on.

Weren’t you upset that he just left you? the patient asked her mother finally.

Oh, no, said Michal with a laugh. Not at all. I admired it, admired him. His charisma, his sangfroid—you do know what that means, my little American ignoramus,
sang-froid
?

I’m not an idiot, the patient replied to her mother.

Of course, said Michal.

And I don’t appreciate your calling me an ignoramus. Yes, you went through a great deal, but still: That doesn’t give you the right to treat me as if I’d spent my life on a marshmallow.

A long hiss of empty tape followed. There was not a rustle, not a cough. How surprising was the patient’s sudden expression of resentment! How long had she been sitting there chafing at Michal’s mild derision, which I had thought almost affectionate?

The patient on the tape broke the silence and said: The leader you’re talking about is Yossele Rosensaft, isn’t it?

A sudden rustle and thud: Her mother jumping up in her chair?

What do you mean? said Michal. How do you know about Yossele Rosensaft?

I told you, I’m not an idiot. I told you I did research, that I read about Bergen-Belsen. And so of course I’d find out about Yossele Rosensaft. And your description fits him: compact, charismatic, steely.

No! said her mother. It wasn’t Rosensaft. Not him! There were other leaders. He wasn’t the only one.

So which one was my father? the patient asked her mother. Rosensaft? Another “leader”? The Hungarian guard? Some kapo right before you were put on the transport? Maybe even someone on the train? Don’t you think I can do the math? Math, the one thing you know I’m good at. I can count the months from April 18th, 1945, the third day after liberation, and get close to December 26th, 1945.

She paused.

My birthday.

Another long silence ensued. The recorder whined; the tape hissed. In the therapist’s office, neither patient nor doctor moved.

Then a faint sound emanated from the tape, which might have been a whimper—whose?

Finally there was a cry, and Michal’s voice saying:

Oh, my dear! Can you forgive me? I am describing events I have not even allowed myself to think of for many years. Of course you would want to know who your father was. It is natural, yes. Natural that you would want to know.

The tape stopped with a click.

And did she finally tell you? asked Dr. Schussler.

Tell me—?

Who your father was.

No, said the patient. She wept. She said she was sorry she didn’t know, couldn’t know. That I had it right. There were four men she had to have sex with right around the time of my conception—and the one man she did want, the “leader”—and she could not be sure which was my father. She kept weeping. But I did not apologize for making her cry: one victory at least. I didn’t “take care of her feelings.” I let her cry. And after a while she looked up, her eyes puffy, her cheeks wet, her beautiful skin slicked with tears, and she asked again if I would forgive her. And if I could leave and come back the next day.

She paused.

I did, and I left.

We only have a minute, said the therapist, but did you believe her? That she really doesn’t know?

I did then. But now …

Now?

I still think that when she saw me for the first time, she was stricken with a bad memory. She saw in me someone she didn’t ever want to see again, or someone who hurt her deeply. It couldn’t have been her sister that she saw in me—you’re right. She would have cried with delight if I looked like her sister.

She paused.

So I’m probably the child of some rapist. Or else of a hero, maybe Rosensaft. Or maybe not.

Does it matter?

Of course it does.

What difference does it make? It does not change you.

Dr. Schussler’s voice had slipped into the tone that invariably tells the patient, The hour is over.

Does it matter? Does it matter who your father is? Your mother? Who are the exact people who dropped their blood into the container that is you?

The patient and therapist had come to the dreadful nub of the matter, the awful question that had haunted my soul since I had become a conscious being at twelve years of age; the question that had hovered over the patient since the moment she had tried, and failed, to defend her declaration
I am not adopted! I have mysterious origins!
For if it mattered who had spawned us, and mattered too much, I was doomed; and if the patient’s unknown and unknowable ancestor possessed the sort of genes that predominated, resonated, indeed conquered all opposing chromosomal challengers—everyone knows of such individuals, whose unlikely red hair, for example, reappears generation after generation—if her father were of that variety, she was consigned to a lifetime of fearing what resided within her: the heart of a rapist? A hero? A brute?

Tuesday morning I awoke with the feeling that something was wrong. I had a sudden, strange headache. And when it passed, I noticed that the edges of things were more rounded than they ought to have been. The window frames were bowed, the doors had gone concave. The light was dusty, chalky. The base of my skull went numb, as did the bridge of my nose: such odd places for numbness (my nose!) that I feared my brain sensors had become hopelessly scrambled, and it was really my leg that had fallen asleep and not the bridge of my nose.

I reacted as I have in the past to these sorts of events: with an attempt to resume normal activities. I went to get myself a glass of water. (I do not know why a glass of water is always offered as a cure for strong sensations, but so it is.) However, on the way to the kitchen, I noticed a rug out of alignment. Tugging it straight required moving the chair that stood upon it. As I did so, I noticed a tear in the cushion fabric that had been mended with strong tape, and I left the cushion upended while I searched for the special tape the landlord had provided. I went opening drawers to find the tape and came upon a file for which I had been searching over days and weeks. I opened the file and tried to read a paragraph but noticed that the paper, too, had become bowed in shape, which caused me to remember the water. But on the way to the kitchen once more, I felt the need to straighten a window shade. But what about the crooked calendar that hung on the wall?

I stopped. I looked about. The rug, the chair, the drawers, the calendar, the window shade—the litter of my obsessions.

I sat down and held my head in my hands, hating the very fact of my existence. For I was caught, once again, in the spider’s web of compulsion. And I did not know if, on this occasion, she would eat me (so to speak); that is, did not know when this particular episode would end, if the night in its entirety would be spent picking lint from a suit jacket, or perhaps I would be doing so into the morning light, perhaps into the days ahead. And even as I pondered these questions, I felt my eyes wander to the trash that had to be put out that night, a task interrupted by the thought that the landlord had not paid the scavenger bill as he had promised, a thought that in turn was interrupted by the idea, once again, that I ought to have a glass of water. It was as if I were trying to write a sentence and had become distracted by the thought of the em dash, and why not an en dash; and why must the question mark contain a period, implying finality, when all one wishes is a momentary pause for doubt or wonderment (the question mark should be placed here, but I do not want it!); that is, if one tried to write and became seized by what creates, shapes, and ends sentences—thereby making it impossible to write; or, applying the metaphor, to live.

In this state did I pass the night—all the long hours until the patient’s next session.

Wednesday morning dawned. The attack was yet in full form. My arrival at the N Judah stop was something of a victory in itself, the entire house ransacked in search of a missing quarter for the fare.

As I rode downtown, a terrible question came to me: What was about to transpire in the room toward which the streetcar was ineluctably carrying me? What would happen in the therapeutic hour that was rapidly approaching?
Does it matter
? Patient and therapist would inevitably return to the question. And everything hinged upon the skill of the therapist. If she did not guide the patient well! If she could not help her cross the river of blood ties! If she could not lead her to a self-created existence! Oh, God, if I should lose my icon, my champion, what would I do? Shout? Tear open the door? Threaten the therapist? Harm her?—

A screech. The streetcar stopped at Market and New Montgomery. The doors opened; I stepped down. I approached the building, and the gargoyles seemed to mock me: You wish to avoid something? they seemed to say. Why, then, come up here and hold the roof! Similarly did the cherubs roll their eyes in hilarity at the sight of me: What a loser! they chuckled. You’ll never make it!

Not even the white purity of the marble could wash away the dark influence of my affliction. It seemed the crows had gained entry, had gotten past the podium without its guard. I had become one of them, I thought; I carried darkness everywhere; no one could escape me (so melodramatically had my nervous condition taken hold of me). Elevator cars came and went. If I did not step into one soon, I would miss the patient’s session.

The cab seemed to float upward to the eighth floor. All the while my anxiety rose with it: What if I should lose my last protections? The protection of the patient, all that stood between me and the spider who even now legged her way toward me? What if, upon hearing the patient’s voice, I remained unchanged, unbecalmed, still the dark creature who might descend upon her?
Her! Her! Her!