Child of the Journey (8 page)

"Of course not! I wrote almost daily, in care of Erich's apartment, until--" He stopped. "The estate?"

"They moved there soon after you left."

"And disconnected the phone at the flat," Sol said quietly, beginning to understand. Small wonder he had not been able to get in touch with her. Erich had seen to that--disconnected the phone, waylaid the letters. "So that is why she has done all those things--married Erich, renounced our faith."

"She thinks she is protecting you, Solomon."

"That son of a bitch," Sol said slowly. "That Nazi bastard."

He was pacing up and down the narrow concrete platform. He would call the estate at once. No. Erich might answer or find out about the call, which could endanger her life. The man was obviously capable of anything. He would go to her. On the next train. Pluck her out of the hands of that lying son of a--

"If you're thinking of going back, think it through again. Except for her work with the underground, she is quite safe--"

"The underground?"

Laboriously the beadle rose to his feet. "Erich's parents have reopened the shop. Miriam works there every Sunday--their Sunday Jew, she calls herself. The sewer is being used as a safe-house. I, myself, hid there for one night."

A sadness passed over his face, as of a memory he would rather forget.

"I must go there!" Sol said. "I should have known--!"

"You could not have known," the beadle said. "If you must go, you must, but see to it that you arrive there on a Sunday. It will be the easiest way, perhaps the only way, to make contact. Except when she is with Konrad, Erich keeps her pretty well confined to the estate."

Taking the beadle's arm, Sol led him up the steps, away from the water. "You'll stay with us for a while?" he asked.

The beadle nodded.

"And perhaps you will take over my teaching duties?"

The beadle nodded again.

"That is good," Sol said. "Because, God willing, I intend to be at that shop on Sunday--and I intend to come back...this time, with Miriam."

A
stonished at how easy it was to get into Berlin, at how little notice anyone took of him, Sol walked from the station to Friedrich Ebert Strasse. Getting out should only be that easy, he thought, but then getting into
prison
is easy too.

Getting out--getting to Amsterdam--he'd had phony letters and affidavits from Erich. Erich had provided everything, down to actual train tickets. He had even included a time-table in the package, and a book to read on the train.

Now, two years later, getting out would be much harder. This time he had real affidavits, but papers from a Hebrew School would carry little if any weight if there were trouble. He had brought affidavits for Miri, too, but she would need more than that. She was too visible a personality to be able to leave quietly.

It was ten o'clock in the morning. He had no intention of being in Germany any longer than he had to--a day at most--so he had brought nothing with him save what he could fit in the pockets of the heavy winter coat he had bought at a secondhand store before leaving Amsterdam.
 
He was determined that, no matter what, by tomorrow morning he and Miriam would be on a train, headed back to the tenuous safety of Holland.

Everything else, the question of Erich, the problem of getting all of them out of the country--to South America or South Africa or South Australia, he did not care where--could wait until later.

Before he knew it, he was within sight of the shop. Herr Weisser stood alone in front of the door. Seeing him filled Sol with a burning hatred that almost--but not quite--equaled what Sol felt for their son. He tugged at the Homburg he had purchased along with the coat, crossed the street, and walked on.

He had forgotten how dreary Berlin was at this time of year.

The sky was gray. The wind whistled around the corners of the buildings, and the air smelled of soot from chimney smoke held in by the low clouds. People en route to church walked with their heads down against the wind. Every now and then, a man or a woman with a dog stopped to let the animal do what it must. The occasional motorcar passed by, and once in a while a man with heavy black boots and a long woolen coat strode by, smelling of Gestapo as strongly as the air was scented with the threat of a late-November snowfall.

He circled the block several times, alert for the Rathenau limousine. It passed him at last. Konnie was at the wheel, alone in front. The back was too dark for him to see who sat there.

Don't let Erich be in that car,
he prayed as the limousine slowed to a halt in front of the shop and Miriam stepped out. Despite his increased pulse rate, Sol tried to look at her dispassionately. Her movements were graceful and fluid; her coat was trimmed in white fur, to match her hat, and her boots were the latest fashion. As she leaned back into the car to get something she had apparently left on the seat, her coat pulled up and he could see her legs--trim as a girl's though without the slight muscularity of a dancer's calf.

She's thirty-two, he reminded himself. I have missed so much!

He watched her talk to Herr Weisser, watched him unlock the door and let her inside. Knowing he dared not go in until Weisser had left, and that he had probably already stood in one spot long enough to have aroused suspicion for loitering, he walked in the direction of the Tiergarten. He forced himself to keep moving away from the shop. When he could stand it no longer, he turned back. He walked faster and faster until he was running, and did not slow down until the shop came into view.

Konnie stood at the door, staring out into the street. Sol followed the direction of the chauffeur's gaze. He could see two people walking in the opposite direction. Squinting, he thought he recognized Frau Weisser's movements.

Konnie disappeared into the shop, reappeared, and went to the car. Moments later, he went back inside, this time carrying a shopping bag.

At the end of his patience, Sol approached the tobacco shop,
Die Zigarrenkiste
.

The familiar jangle of the bell over the door made his stomach tighten. Miriam stood with her back to him, reaching for something on a shelf high above her head.

Konrad saw him at once. "Herr--" He turned pale, then beamed as Sol put a finger to his lips.

Walking up to the counter, Sol pulled his hat down low and bent his head as if to examine the cigars that lay beneath the glass.
"Kan ek yets kopen, Mejevrou?"
he asked softly in Dutch. "Could I buy something, Miss?"

She turned around, startled in the way of someone whose thoughts have been a million kilometers away.

"Forgive me, sir, I don't speak--" she began.

He lifted his head. She stopped, grew so pale he thought she would faint, and began to cry.

At once he was behind the counter, his arm around her waist. Tightening the heel of his hand against the base of her spine, he arched her toward him and bent to kiss her. Her mouth tasted warm and moist. He kissed her face, drinking in her salty tears.

"You're alive...free!"

"I've been in Amsterdam all this time."

Miriam touched his face as if to assure herself that he was flesh and blood. She could not seem to stem the flow of tears down her cheeks. "Erich," she managed between sobs. "He...said you'd been arrested. Put in a camp." She took a deep breath. "He said the only hope I had of protecting you was to stay with him and do everything he said!"

Sol's thoughts must have been written on his face; as if she could read them, she looked at him seriously. "He could not force me to love him the way I love you."

"I know what happened," he said gently. "Beadle Cohen made it to Amsterdam. He told me."

"Why didn't you write? What you must have thought before you knew...."

"I did write...at first. Erich must have intercepted the letters. Later, I decided you had made a choice. You do have that right, you know."

"I am your
wife,
Sol. I made my choice a long time ago."

"We'll get out--this time together." Sol lowered his voice. "Can we talk here? Is it safe?"

As if in answer to his question, the doorbell jangled. He glanced at the curtain that separated the shop from the cellar stairs, and she nodded. "I'll be down as soon as I can."

He went down into the cellar and opened the grate that led down into the sewer. A child again, climbing down into the hideaway that had been his and Erich's secret place.

The sewer was cold and damp. He took off his coat and put it over his knees like a blanket. He waited.

There was a flash of light. A cobalt-blue glow infused the sewer. Let it be the Ethiopian vision, he thought. On the train from Amsterdam, he had decided that the woman, Judith, represented the dybbuk. Knowing that, he would watch more closely, listen more carefully. He had experienced visions since childhood. At first he had thought them disjointed, random, but slowly there had emerged common themes. Each had a person who might, like himself, be possessed by a dybbuk. Mention of a Jewish homeland on the African island of Madagascar--an idea similar, Herr Rathenau had once told him, to what the Nazis had long considered.

Eventually, Sol thought, giving himself over to the light, I will understand the visions' lessons...if indeed they have anything to teach----

--stars sprinkle the cobalt-blue heavens.
They shine on beehives rising up like ancient columns and on a black man and a white woman who sit on a blanket spread out among daisies and wisps of smoke. The woman lies down on her side, props herself up on one arm and begins to sketch. The man remains on his haunches, forearms across knees--hands turned palms up; anguish etches his face. 

"I want to be considered a
whole
Jew!" His voice is strained with emotion. "Can't they understand that?"

"You
are
a whole Jew." She sounds more clinical than concerned. "Only the Falasha think differently."

"They treat my people like lepers! Because of them, we have been forced to live in the honeycomb caves for a hundred generations. It is neither right nor fair!"

"Prejudice exists everywhere." She shakes her head sadly, folds the overleaves of her sketch pad down flat, and drops her pencil. "What
is
the name of your tribe, Emanuel?"

"L'Am
--The People. Do not ask me where they are. As for
why
they are, if I knew, I would tell you that!" He covers his head with his hands. "When I was young, my nights were full of such questions, but I did not ask my elders for fear they did not know the answers." His voice has taken on a hollow, haunted tone. "One day a group of Falasha nomads camped near our caves, come to graze their goats. At night I could hear them praying. One night, when I could not sleep, I stole in among their tents. Their
kohamin
--the priest--spotted me. They threw me into a thorn bush. As I lay crying and bleeding, the priest spat on me. 'Hydra-headed Jew!' he shouted. 'Go home to your pagan gods!'"
 

"No doubt he was referring to the First Commandment--'Thou shalt have no other gods before Me'," the woman says.

"Does that Commandment not prove there are other, lesser gods? Yet they pretend otherwise! And our language--"

"What about your language, Emanuel?"

He stares at the cocoon of bread with its melting honey.

She leans toward him. "Tell me."

"The Falasha...they laugh at it. They call it 'The Language of the Bee.'"

"Yours is the language of the Song of Deborah."

"De-bo-rah." He pronounces the word as if it were music.

She places a loving hand on his arm. "Deborah means 'bee' in Old Hebrew," she says. "She was a prophetess--a judge who was instrumental in freeing the ancient Israelites from the Canaanites."

"I do not understand." He looks at her curiously, as though she is saying words he has never heard before.

"The Cushitic Falashas--we call them Black Jews--don't speak your language," she says. "Only musty scholars like myself and your people know Old Hebrew. The true language of liturgy, I call it, for it is free of the Aramaic influences that changed Hebrew forever." She gives him a gentle shake as if to break him from his mood. "Your tribe is blessed, Emanuel. Your...your
agony
, if you will, has preserved the past. Soon the whole world will know of your suffering and be grateful to you."

He furrows his forehead, then looks down at the ground as Malifu pads forward. The smaller man holds a huge dish quilted with
injera
layered with chunks of meat and light broth. The two men do not look at each other.

"The
wat
--stew--looks lovely," the woman tells Malifu, taking the dish from him. "Fetch the wine, please. Then tend to your bees. The hives
farthest away
need the most attention."

He bows; understood. He has not once looked at Emanuel. After he brings the wine, he wanders off amid the hives.

"Tej
--honey wine...nectar of the gods." The woman grins and drinks deeply. "If nothing else,
this
proves the whole universe isn't monotheistic!"