Cafe Scheherazade (18 page)

Again I hear the steel in Avram's voice. I see the young man of the swamps, smeared with mud and sweat. I hear the tale, and I cannot move. All I can do is listen at the table in the back room, and allow the story to be told.

There were moments, however few, of respite. They would sit by a fire, and inhale the conifer-scented night. ‘After three years of powerlessness, we could decide our own fate,' says Avram. ‘We were no longer helpless. We faced death with every step, but we had a measure of control over our lives.

‘And there were the hours by the fire, after a successful raid. We baked potatoes. We gazed at the glowing embers and flames. We sang Russian and Yiddish songs. We recalled fragments of our past lives and, to this day, when we meet, those who survived, those of us who settled in Melbourne or New York, in Jerusalem, Buenos Aires, Mexico City or Montreal, in cities scattered throughout the world, we feel a bond of love; and the scent of the past returns.

‘In the swamps and forests we were kings. We lived by our instincts and wits. When the Luftwaffe planes circled overhead we would hide in the mud. They were too frightened to come by land. We could remain invisible in the swamps for hours on end. We ate the grass and drank our own urine to ease our thirst. We learnt that everything can be turned to an advantage. When the planes dropped their bombs, they would get stuck in the mud. We would creep up, defuse them, take out the explosives, and use them in our mines.'

As Avram speaks I see a radiance, born of freedom, of being able to defend oneself. I see him with his companions, seated on forest floors knotted with pine needles and cones. I hear the notes of a mouth organ, the chorus of a partisan song. I inhale the aroma of birches grazed with smoke. And I sense the ambiguities, the interplay of shadow and light.

As if he has intuited my thoughts, Avram adds, ‘In the forests we were like eagles. There were times when we could soar. But like eagles, to survive, we had to descend back to the mud, to the smell of death, and learn to stalk our prey. We had no option but to lower ourselves in the dirt in order to regain our wings.'

Yet it could steal upon them any time: an aching sense of loss. During a raid, or as they went about their daily work, such emotions had to be suppressed. They could cause a lapse in judgment, a miscalculation at a vital moment. They could cost a comrade's life. This longing would steal upon them, nevertheless. Even as they slept, it would enter their dreams in the form of a loved one: a mother, father, husband, wife, a lover or child.

So intense were these images the dreamers did not want to wake. They reached out to touch the mirage, but found themselves back in their underground shelters, buried beneath the earth. And there were those times late at night by a dying fire, when they allowed themselves to summon a loved one's face in the glow of the embers. Or their image would be conjured up by a song:

The flame in the hearth flickers,

The sap on the pine flows like tears.

The accordion is singing to me

The song of the smile in your eyes.

You are far from me, so very far;

Between us stretch forests and fields,

Between us the distance is vast.

Yet, death is so very near.

Sing, my accordion,

Sing and defy the wind,

My twisted fate please unravel

And its meaning, I beg you, make clear.

Even as Avram listened to this most loved of Russian partisan songs, even as he looked about him and saw the tears in his comrades' eyes, and heard the hissing of the dying flames; even then, a future battle line was being drawn; between love and rage; between the desire to receive a lover's warmth, and the impulse to recoil; between a belief in life and a loss of faith. It was to become his greatest struggle, and it would truly begin only when the fighting was fully done.

In the first week of July 1944, Radio Moscow echoed in the Rudnicki swamps with orders from central command: abandon the forests! Pursue the retreating enemy! Join the Red Army advance!

The partisans trekked towards Vilna. As they moved through the Ponary woods, past the sites of the killing fields, they came across a freshly dug grave. Avram can still see it, the earth heaving, the grains of dirt sliding down the mounds. The final massacre had taken place just hours before their arrival. While they retreated, German soldiers had murdered sixty Polish priests.

A pall of crimson hung over the ancient city. Red Army tanks led the assault. Artillery battered the walls. A hunger for revenge seethed in the partisan ranks. For five days the battle raged over the paved streets and cobblestone lanes, from house to house, building to building, through charred courtyards and vacant lots. German soldiers and collaborators were rounded up and shot. Vilna shook under the onslaught.

Then it was over. An eerie stillness prevailed. The partisans marched through desolate streets. They wept for the loss of their loved ones. They spat on the graves of their enemies; and they lamented the beloved city that had been laid to waste.

This would be the worst night for Avram, the night of his liberation. His battalion was billeted in ‘Napoleon's palace', a Vilna landmark, said to have gained its name in 1812 during his ill-fated Russian campaign. The partisans were issued with new boots, several hundred roubles, and discharged by the army command. Avram's comrades dispersed throughout the city to rejoin surviving family and friends. Avram remained in the palace. There was no one to seek out.

He paced the corridors, the palatial suites. He stood on the balconies and gazed at bombed-out streets. And the darkness claimed him. For the first time in his life, he was completely alone. He was free. The war seemed over. But he was not yet saved. His entire family had vanished into unmarked graves.

He did not know what to do with himself. He could not rest. He could not bear his solitude. He wandered the rooms with mounting panic. On the night of his liberation something seemed to give way within him: the will to live. There was no past and no future. All that he had once held so dear seemed to have been unmasked as a cruel lie.

Vilna had become a netherworld, caught between the living and the newly dead, a world of transmigrating souls. Avram surrendered to events that appeared to be beyond his control. He seethed with a sense of loss, and an overwhelming desire for vengeance. He dreamt of confronting his tormentors, the murderers of his loved ones. He imagined tearing them limb from limb, setting fire to their homes, their villages, their prized possessions. He dreamt of watching them as the terror rose in their eyes.

Yet there were times when even this one remaining desire was replaced by fatigue. ‘I had seen too much brutality, too much killing,' says Avram. ‘I could not take it any longer. All I wanted was to forget. But it was still taking place. Even now, on the streets of Vilna, I could not avoid it. I was part of it. The war had not truly ended. There were times when we believed it would never end.

‘When I had entered Vilna with the Red Army, I came across the body of one of my former teachers, Opeshkin was his name. He was one of my childhood heroes. He had a passion for knowledge, a love of language and literature.

‘He too had come out into the forests. He had fought with both weapons and words. He composed poems that depicted our plight. When we found him, his body was still warm. We had arrived just half an hour too late. I felt impotent. Life seemed to be a mere game of chance.'

Again the stories are cascading, as we move with Avram through the ruins of Vilna, seeking out informers, dragging them from their places of hiding.

‘We came upon a former inmate of the ghetto, who had collaborated with the Gestapo. He hailed us as liberators. When he saw that we were going to execute him, he fell to his knees and begged for his life. His wife was screaming. She sank to her knees beside him. I tried to stop my comrades, but they were too hardened. And I was tired. So tired.

‘He was sentenced to immediate death. “Killing him is not enough,” said one the partisans. He took out a knife and slowly began to cut into his flesh. We had to drag him away from the screaming prisoner. A comrade took out a pistol and shot the informer on the spot. It was an act of kindness. Otherwise he would have been torn to pieces.

‘The act of killing, I could not take it any more. I suppressed my feelings. I had no choice. I would have been crushed. Many times I just wanted to lie down and close my eyes. It was a sweet thought. I wanted to be rid of all feeling.'

Avram's life hung in the balance. The world was precariously poised. The Red Army was on the advance. The front was moving westwards. Vaselenko, a former comrade and partisan commander, took Avram under his wing. As the new director of railways in the Vilna district, he was anxious to secure able workers. Avram was put in charge of trains that delivered arms and food supplies to the front.

Avram pursued the job with characteristic zeal, and a sense of abandon. He no longer cared. His survival instincts had deserted him. One morning it was reported that someone had raided a shipment of vodka. While he investigated the report, a Red Army officer approached and asked for several bottles of the prized spirits. Avram refused, pulled out a revolver, and threatened to shoot if the officer disobeyed his orders.

That evening Avram was summoned to the office of the Red Army captain in charge of the station. ‘Is it true that you threatened one of my men?' the captain asked. Avram did not deny the charge. The offending officer was called into the room; and again Avram refused his demands for vodka, even though they were supported by the station master.

‘They could not believe I wasn't corrupt,' says Avram. ‘They searched my room and my few belongings. They could not find even one bottle. They were angry. And they saw I was a fool. I did not know how to play their system. Take a bit, give a bit, make a bit on the side, and get drunk. Those were the unspoken rules of the game.'

There was something else they could not fathom. Something that is evident even now, half a century later, in the tone of voice with which Avram recounts the tale. They could not see that his zeal was the final bastion of his crumbling faith, an attempt to resurrect a shattered will.

Avram lost the job; and drifted into another, more suited to a man who had lost his capacity to feel. He was assigned to a Red Army intelligence unit. His unit was sent to the Prussian border, to newly captured territory in the wake of the army's advance. Avram interrogated those suspected of collaboration. He knew his job well. He had practised the primitive art of extracting information in the forests of Vilna.

The autumn of liberation gave way to a winter of interrogation. Avram became captive to the indifferent world of the inquisitor. His fists were clenched. His jaw set tight. He did his job. It was a job that had to be done. He cross-examined, exposed fabrications, forced confessions.

As for those whom he interrogated? Sometimes Avram registered their terror. Their cries for mercy. In a war waged among civilians there were many losers. Such as the young Lithuanian woman who kept a diary which indicated she had slept with SS officers.

She seemed small and pathetic. She trembled with fear. She wore cheap lipstick. Her powdered cheeks could not hide her ageing skin. Her barely audible replies trailed off as she lowered her eyes and gnawed her polished nails.

So this is what it has come to, thought Avram. The front was moving westwards. The Red Army was advancing in triumph, while he was condemned to crawl in the shadows and extract confessions from those who had slept with the enemy.

Avram's unit returned to Vilna where he continued his intelligence work. One by one they found each other, pre-war comrades, childhood friends who had survived. They would meet in the evenings to play cards and exchange their extraordinary tales.

Avram was a valued member of this band. As an intelligence officer he had access to stocks of food: rolls of salami, herring, cheese; and flagons of vodka, their ‘medicine'. His scruples had softened. He agreed to accumulate the precious supplies and deliver them to his comrades.

Avram lay on his dormitory bed. Beside him lay a bag packed with food and drink. In the evening he was to meet his friends. It was a Sunday afternoon in the winter of 1944, and he was engrossed in
The Stormy Life of Lazik Roitschwantz
, a novel written by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg. He would remember the exact page, the precise passage, and little else, when he next awoke. The hero of the novel was escaping from Russia to Paris. It would be the last thing Avram would remember for many weeks to come.

Avram awoke six weeks later in a military hospital. The face of a woman entered into his field of vision. As the lens widened he saw her sitting beside the bed. She was wearing a white coat. Behind her floated orderlies and nurses, a world of white upon white.

She began to question him. Gently. Avram had lost his memory, except for four vital facts, which he clung to with tenacity. He could recite them over and again.

Fact one: he was a partisan.

Fact two: he was a Yid.

Fact three: he was a Vilner.

Fact four: his mother and sister had been murdered by the Nazis.

That was all. And for the time being, it was enough, except for the food that was placed beside his bed, as if in reward for his startling performance.

Avram fell upon the food like a famished beast. The questioning resumed; and the four facts persisted. Avram recited them in a monotone: I am a partisan. I am a Yid. I am a Vilner. And my mother and sister were murdered.

The psychiatrist changed tack. She held up a chart with the letters of the Russian alphabet. Avram identified them with ease. She handed him a book. He placed his cheeks against the paper. He smelt the pages. Ran his fingers over the text. He saw the letters come into focus, the words form; he gathered in the sentences.

Avram had always worshipped books. They were his father's most valued possessions. It was a passion he had transmitted to his son. Their Vilna apartment had been crowded with books. They tumbled off the living-room shelves, lay at random upon the kitchen table, clung to every available space.